
Boole ^2^*^ 



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This Book is the Property of the 

U.S. COA^' AND GEOD-T-C S. ■ ., 

3J0 m u 3 1 b e carried o n R c o k ! n v e n to ry 
i; not retL::-ned before v/ie Expiration 
of the CalGiidar Year. 



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LijouiilXnoiuinij native laiiQ. 



Tliere are 11\csl ..... _..uise llie poel who carisoar in starrij spheres. 

Hr\i cari rnould liis mystic phrases jrorn lt|.e wrecks 0/ otfier years, 
1 would l\ave my irispiralion fresh frorri nature's operi t\and- 

1 would siri£ a simple sonnet Ihal a child caq ui\ders[and. 

There are those wljo seek in otiier elin]e§ tf|e joys Iheij rrii^ght havekROwr\ 
Mid Hie rriounfairis and the meadows 0/ the land Iheq call their owri. 

I would seek the shady canyons where a! ai^ht the penile dew 
Conies [0 Kiss the ''o^e and heliotrope wl\er\ stars are all in vieiv. 

I would walk the verdant vp.lleq where the salt waves wash fhe feet 
Oj Ihe Wasatch. GaziaS upward where the sky and mountains nieel. 

Filled with awe aad adrniratiori 1 would kneel upon the strand . 
yind thank heaven [or this picture everi I can ui\derstand. 

1 would stand aniid these niouniains wilh Jheir hueless capso/snov-'. 

Lookin_g down the distant valley stretchin_Q far away below: 
/lr[d with reverential rapture thank my Maker for this^rar^d. 

Peerless, priceless panorama thai a child can understaiid 



LIBUA 



No. 



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TA H 



\ PhtF l.MU A .WOUM Al,N-VVALLhl 
TREASURY OF THE GODS. 



b > P . D O N A N 



■V.M IT _ 



A H L A rv tz. . 

Here, wlitsi .r :- C.V-.UIC liiiiL v.: 1 apLuxe evermore 

p., N inf! lilt' !^k ies. 



.^.,.^fe«.-T-''*?''/^-; 




■ 'BL7 



Sangre de Cristo, let me trace 
The beauties of thy furro\x/ed face; 
While poncha-perfurried summer breeze 
Makes music in thiqe arboles, 



This Book 13 the Property of the 

! . S. COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY, 

and mu.t be car-necftn Book Inventory 
H . ' returned before the Expiration 
^f V . ^.alendar Year. 



Copyrlkil It, 18t)l. 1 >>- Cuasiui!^ C. SmltU 



•MMMWJMORTMRUPCO. 
■BurrALOrjY, 

ARTISTICt* 
ENCRAVINO- 
■PRINTING' 

rBlNDlNCj-n 



^. 






INTPxODUCTORY 



TnK I'Oi.i.v oi- Americans who Travkl Ahroad Bki-ork 
They Have Seen Tiikir Own Country. 




ASTERX newspaper statisticians are proverbially masters 
of tlie art of inaccuracy, and their so-called statistics are 
usually to be taken, like dreams or women's whims, by 
contraries. But they are probably not far wrong in their 
every-season estimate that a hundred thousand Americans 
annually make the tour of Europe at an average expense 
of at least a thousand dollars each. That is a total of a hundred million 
dollars a year e.xpended by new-world people in familiarizing themselves 
with old-world scenes, while, as a general thing, they are wholly unac- 
quainted with the infinitely grander scenes on their own side of the Atlantic 
ferry. In a single day of the recent season eight huge ocean steamers left 
New York, bearing nearly three thousand first-cabin passengers for a Euro- 
pean summer tour. Every steamship that sails during the fashionable 
outing months goes crowded with these too often ignorant and snobocratic 
.American voyagers to foreign lands for recreation and pleasure, that could 
be far more easily and cheaply found at home. How many of them have 
ever seen the glories ami grandeurs, the beauties antl sublimities of their 
own matchless land ? How many of them know, how many of them have 
ever dreamt, that their own — our own — is incomparably the grandest 
continent on all the globe ? 

There is urgent need of a constitutional amendment prohibiting any 
untutored .American citizen or citizeness, redolent of pork corners, wheat 
gouges, stock swindles, and " just-struck-rich-dirt "-inesses, from going 
abroad to paralyze the cab-tl rivers and coffee-house waiters of effete 
monarchies with gilded republican airs until he or she has seen and learned 
something of America. It should require, as an inexorable conilition- 
precedent for permission to squander .\merican gold and silver in London 
haberdashers' establishments and Parisian milliners' shops, and to go into 



cheap raptures — after careful consultation of the guide-books — over 
Italian skies and mole-hills, duck-ponds and dilapidated macaroni hash- 
eries, a certificate from the president ami j^^eneral manager of some such 
great system of American railway as the Rio dranile Western, Denver eV 
Rio Grandc\ anil Colorado Midland, that the would-be foreign voyager had 
visiteil all the wondrous and glorious scenes along their lines. It would be 
an admirable educational measure. It would give tens of thousands of 
semi-bogus .\mericans — native-born aliens — some idea of the grandeur of 
their own country, and prevent tliein from making the lavish displays of 
ignorance and stupidity with which they now amuse or disgust the first 
intelligent man or woman they meet after setting foot on European soil. 

It was Byron who, meeting one of these typical American tourists in 
Florence, eagerly exclaimed : ••Tell me of Niagara Kails I Describe your 
great cataract to me I " When the American shamefacedly confessed he 
had never seen the cataractic wonder of the world, the poet abruptly turned 

on Wis heel and left him, denouncing as " a d d fool " any man who, 

without having seen Niagara, would cc^iie from Ameriia to Kuroi)e to sham 
ecstacv over pigmy mountains and lakes aiul rivers. .\iul the lame author 
of "Childe Harold " was not too severe. 

The more one sees of our majestic half-world — our continental American 
republii- — the less patience he must have with those absurd creatures who, 
everv vear, llock by tens of thousands to other lands, while they have seen 
nothing and know nothing of their own. Earth lias no other land like ours. 
Among all the nationalities ami realms of the globe, " Columbia, the Cein 
of the Ocean," is peerless, unrivaled and unrivalable, unapproached 
ami unapi^roachable. The grandest empires of the old world, of 
am ieiil or of modern times, sink to petty provinces beside its vast 
dimensions. The whole possessions of Rome, wiien her 
"".'A.. golden eagles spread their wings victorious from the 
burning sands of .\frica to the misl-clad hills of Calc- 
^_ donia. fell short of the immensity of our new-world 

v^tS'-^ ilomain. Russia, vastest of modern sovereignties, 
could be lost in our half-hemisphere beyond the 
power of all the buzzards in C'hristcndom to 
fiml her. France, land of Nai^oleon, at 
the tread of whose legions but three 
(piarters of a century ago all 



Europe trembled as if 

taken with a Wabash- 

valley ague, would 

;■ scarcely overlap the 

single Territory of 

Itah ; while dreat 





THE ACROPOLIS OF THE DESERT. 



Britain, whose mornin<i^ drum-beat sounds around the globe, would hartlly 
make a fly-speck i>n the face of Texas or California. 

Do other lands boast of their great rivers ? We could take up all their 
\iles and Thameses, tiieir yellow 'Fibers, castleil Rhines and beautiful blue 
Danubes by their little ends, and empty them into our majestic Mississippis 
and Missouris, Columbias and Rio Cirandes, Amazons, Saskatchewans and 
De La Platas without making rise enough to lift an Indiana f^at-boat off a 
sandbar. Do they brag of their seas and lakes? We could spill all their 
puny Caspians and Azovs, Nyanzas and Maggiores, into our mighty 
Superiors, Michigans, Hurons, Kries and Ontarios, and .scarce produce a 
ripple on their pebbled brims to wash away the eighteen-inch "foot-print on 
the sands of time" left by the fairy-like slipper of a St. Louis or Chicago 
girl ; while in any ring, Manpiis of (^ueensbury rules, our Wasatch-walled 
(ireat Salt Lake could strip the championship belt for mystery antl majesty 
from their long-famed, Sodom-engulfing, weird Dead Sea. Dt) they prate 
of their romantic scenery? Wc have a thousand jewel-like lakes that would 
make all their vaunted ("omos, denevas and Kiltarneys hide their faces in a 
veil (jf friendly fog. The rolling thunder of our Niagara drowns out the 
feeble murmur of all their cataracts ; while the awful crags and canyons of 
our Yellowstone ami ^'()semite, Cunnison. .Arkansas and Colorado ; the pris- 
matic glitter and dash of our Minnehahas, Shoshones and Ocklawahas ; and 
the lonely grandeur of our horizon-fenced prairies, boundless oceans of 
billowy verdure, ihvarf to insipidity the most famous .scenes of Switzerland 
and Italy, eclipse the wonders and glories of the Arabian Nights, and defy 
all the skill of poet's pen and artist's pencil to depict the veriest atom of 

8 



their sublimity ami their loveliness. Do they prattle about their /Ktnas and 
Vesuviuses? With our noses turnin.ij somersets of ineffable contempt clear 
over our heads, we thunder forth our Cotopaxis, Popocatapetis, Chimbora- 
zos and a score of other jawbreakers whose very names alone are too huge 
for common ton>jues. (It is true that some of these specimens of national 
prodigiousness do not just exactly belong to us yet ; but they belong to our 
next-door neighbors, who are n(Jt as strtMig as we are, antl to the gloriously 
expansive spirit of ^'ankee progress, where or what is the difference?) Do 
other lands anil nations talk of their mines of jewels and gold ? We answer 
with the exhaustless bonanzas of C^alifornia, Coloratlo, Montana, Idaho and 
Utah, where mountains of gold and silver ore challenge the skies, anil where 
the ceaseless thunder of liie world's greatest bullion-mills resounds in the 
vet warm lair of the Rocky Mountain grizzly bear. Do they rave of the 
harvest fields of Clermany and Britain, and the vine-ckul hills of France ? 
We show them half a hemisphere, with soils and climates as varied as the 
, tastes of men, and with capacities for production as boundless as the 
needs of men ; yielding everything, cereal, vegetable, animal, textile 
and mineral, agricultural, horticultural, geological, zoological, 
pomological, piscatorial, and ornithological, ovine, bovine, capri- 
cornine and equine, that all the wants of all the races, 
tribes, kindreds and tongues of earth can ever require. The 
sun in heaven, in all his grand rounds since " the eve- 
, iiing and the UKjrning were the first day." never looked 
on a more magnificent domain — a fresh and 
glorious half-world, grand in all its pro- 
l)ortions, and endlessly diversified, rich 
and gorgeous in all its atlornments, resting 
like a vast emerald breastpin upon the 
bosom of four great oceans. It is the 
broadest land ever given to any ])eople, 
the grandest and most beautiful, the most 
varied in its productions, and the most 
unlimited in its capabilities, and its future, 
( )ther lands surjiass it only in age and 
ruins. Time, if we wait long enough, will 
remedy the tieficiency in age ; and we are already able to 
show some rather picturesque, though by no means majestic, 
ruins after every presidential election. 








THE GARB 0P THE HILLS. 



OO visit the hiUs in the springtime, 

When the little buds burst on the trees, 
And the perfume of pinon aqd wild flowers 

Is borne on the breath of the breeze. 
When the rivulets leap fromi the snowlands, 

As down toward the valley they sing, 
To gladden the rose-laden low-lands — 

Go visit the hills in the spring ! 

And then, when the sunnmier is over, 

And the dead leaves ape strewn o'er the land, 
When the blossoms have^ropped from the clover, 

A garment niore gorgetJ|s and grand 
Is worn by the h'lls. Titffeifthe verdure, 

The green and the freshness of spring 
Have changed — the flowers have faded — 

The song-birds are ceasing to sing, 

But look I in the morn, when the sunlight 

First flashes its rays o'er the range, 
Ever changing anon till the wan light 

Of evening is on — note each change — 
Blends the ^'^e and flarne of the oak tree 

W -he aspen so tall ; 

All the radiani rays of the rainbow 

f\re worn bv the hills in the fall. 



II. 
STILL INTRODUCTORY 



A CiKNiii-: I\Ai' A r riiK Too-Prkvalknt Amkruan 

IcXORANCE OF AmF.RICA. 




ALL this niagiiificeiit, more than imj)crial domain, one of 
the fairest y^arden spots is L'tah. \'es, gentle or ungentle 
reader, as the case may be, you deciphered it aright — the 
word is Utah. Vou do not know where it is? That is 
not surprising. Tliere is notliing of whicii the average 
intelligent American knows less than he does of the 
geography of his own country. Utah ? Vou never heard of it e.xcept as a 
wild, far-awav spot in a dismal wilderness, where every shrub has a cactus 
thorn and conceals a stinging reptile, and where the very waters heave up 
brimstone, pitch and ashes — a sort of cross between Mades and the (ireat 
Sahara, the fitting home of a horile of semi-savage fanatics known as Mor- 
mons ? Very likely. \'(nir ignorance is not e-vcejitional. Even educated 
Americans are phenomenal in the profundity and variety of what they do 
not know in regard to every region and characteristic of their native land 
bevond the range of their own chimneys' smoke. They laugh at foreigners 
for mi.xing up New ^'ork and San Francisco, and e.xpecting to find buffaloes 
and warwhooping Indians in the suburl)s of Ciiuinnati and Chicago : while, 
in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every possible thousaml. they 
show little greater knowledge than the more excusable blunderers they 
deritle. 

.At a dinner given in New Orleans, a few years ago. to a haknta man, a 
ladv prominent in Crescent City society said to the guest of the occasion: 
"I understand, sir, vou live in Dakota. You probably know a friend of 
mine, Mr. William Jones, out there ?"" The Dakotan turned to see if slie was 
not simply .guying him ; but, jH-rceiving that she was in earnest, replied : 
" In wliat |iart of Dakota, madam, does your accjuaintance live?" " I think." 
she answered, "in a little jilace called Yankton. Isn't there a town of that 
name out there?" " \'es, madam." was the grave rejoiniler ; "but are you 




f 







aware that, from my liome on Devil's Lake, Dakota, lo \ankton, where you 
think your frient.!, Mr. Jones, resides, by the sliortcst travehiljle route, is 
about eight liundred miles, or just one hundrcil and fiftetii miles less than 
from New Orleans to Chicago?" The statement, at that time, was abso- 
lutely true, but the man wiio made it was promptly set tlown by everv guest 
at the table, as liic worst specimen of wild .»esterii M ur.chaust'nisni thai liad 
ever appeared in New Orleans. 

So, esteemed nuulam, miss or sir, if ignorance, like misery, i(neil company, 
you would have abundance of it, even among our most cultivated people. 
V'our lack of knowledge as to Utah is not unparalleled, but it will hereafter 
be unpardonable, or this brief dissertation will have failetl in its mission. 
A few moments of your valuable time and attention and you will kn<jw con- 
siderably more than you do, and still be just as handsome as you are. 

A theme so vast and varied, so rich and beautiful, appropriately begins a 
new cliapter. 




^■^r 






"5** 



13 



in. 
UTAH. 



A BrII;I CiKNKKAl. ( ) L' Il.I NK. ( i lit X.kA 11 1 U AI.. ScENIi AM 

Resoukcekui.. <)! A W'oNnKRiri. Rkcion. 




TAH extends Irom 37'' to 42"^" Nortli latitude, aiul Ironi ;^2^' 
to 37 West longitude, and is an almost exact scjuare, three 
hundred miles each way. It has an area of 87,750 square 
s q) miles, or 52,601,600 acres ; of which 2,780 square miles, or 
1,776,200 acres, are water. It is 11,420 square miles, or 
7,308,800 acres, larifer than Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, 
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and 
Delaware, all combined ; and there is no region of equal area on 
the g^lobe, tiuit overflows with more abounding and diversified riches of 
resource and possibility. 

Utah was first settled by a detachment of Mormons, under the leadershij) 
of Hrijfham \'oun.i;", in July, 1847 ■ 3"*^' there is no stronger argument in 
favor of the Mormon claim to tliviiie revelations and inspirations, than the 
fact that they should have been led through nearly three thousand miles of 
unexplored wilderness, infested at every step by hostile savages, to such a 
" Land of I'romise," where every promise finds so glorious fulfillment, 
(iuided by the Jehovah-swayed " [Mllar of cloud by day, and pillar of fire 
by night," Israel of okl wandered forty years in search of a "promised 
laiul ■' that would hardly make a cow-lot in I'tah. 

I.ift all New l-.ngland and New N'ork bodily a mile above the level of the 
sea. Aild five thousand feet to the height of Mount Washington, and seven 
thousand to that of Mount Mitchell Throw in ilozens of other jieaks fully 
as high, all lynching holes in the sky with their snowy crowns. Pile up, 
everywhere, hundreds on hundreds of mountains from ten to fourteen thou- 
sand feet high. Exaggerate fifty-fold all the wild notches and gorges and 
glens of eastern America, and multiply them by scores. Send cataracts and 
cascades leajiing and foaming down a thousand di/.zy precipice channels. 
Toss in. iiromiscuouslv, parks larger than whole States in the tame, small- 



14 



notioned east; anil gardens of giant stauiaiy — statues of gods and genii 
and gnomes, Titans, Centaurs, and un-named monsters, tiiousands of feel 
high — hewn by ages on ages of winds and waves and wliirling waters 
Cap ail the mountain-tops with everlasting ice and snow, and clothe their 
shaggy sides witli waving forests of valuable timber. Fill all the vallevs to 
the mountains' fi-el with orchards and gardens, vineyards and grain-fields, 
bending beneath tlie burdens of their own magnificent fruitage ; and dot the 
horizon-bounded pasture- lands with flocks and herds, waist-decj) in the verv 
wantonness of plenty. I'nderlay the whole vast area with gold and silver, 
zinc, copper, lead anil iron ores; marble of a hundred hues; anthracite, 
bituminous and cannel coal ; salt. sul|)hur, soila, lime and gypsum ; and 
nearly every other metal and mineral in human use. 'i'hrough Cfjuntless 
wondrous canyons, pour mighty rivers with water-power enough to run all 
the world's machinery. Smite the rock-ribbed laboratories of CJinnipotence. 
and let unnuifibcred healing floods gush forth, rich in miracle-working virtues 
for the alleviation of many of the sorest "ills that flesh is heir to." As the 
dazzling bosom-jewel of the whole transcendent scene, spread out the 
twenty-five hundred square miles of that majestic and mysterious lake, 
whose waters hold in solution wealth enough to pay all the national debts 
of the world, and leave a fortune for every man, w-oman and child from Cajie 
Cod to \'uba Dam. .Vnil over all throw the glory of a climate unsurpa.ssed 
under heaven since sin and death climbed into Eden, and the translucent 
splendor of skies more radiantly sapphirean than ever bent their crystal 
arches above the far-famed, beggar-hemmed and flea-girt Bay of Naples, or 
the I-ake of Como, on whose enchanted shores lav the bogus ranch of that 
glib-tongued bunco-steerer, Claude Melnottt — And — vou have a poor, faint, 
puny appro.ximation to an idea of I'tah I 

It is a land where mountains of gold and silver ore. that runs from I'lfty 
to five thousand dollars to the ton, wall in valleys that yield from sixty to 
eighty bushels of wheat, from seventy-five to a hundred bushels of oats, 
and from Cwt himdred to nine hundred bushels of potatoes, to the acre. It 
is a land where every man makes his own rain, and the crops never fail ; 
where the rewards of industry are as sure as the decrees of God ; where 
wonder treads on beauty's heels, and riches rush to meet the earnest seeker. 
Its resources are as boundless as its limits, and as varied as the ever- 
changing hues that bathe its sunsets in prismatic splendors. Here is 
Cte-opia indeed I 

What is there lint the imagination of man can conceive, or his eye, heart, 
soul, stomach or pocket can desire, that LTtah does not yield, or cannot 
offer? Is it scenery or climate? Is it health or wealth, fertile farms, 
bonanza mines, or lovely homes? Is it opportunities for profitable invest- 
ments, or openings for all varieties of labor and of enterjirise ? 

Let a fresh chapter begin the brief replv. 

•5 




If- (aiilj:i W (j]g.riJ' 

.Irn ioirig lo painl a piclure willi a pencil of rny owi\; 
' I 5^^^1! liavB tio liand {o lielp nie, 1 stiall pairit it all alone: 
'Oj( I /aucy il ke/ore Tne and iny liopejul tieartjioyvs /aii\l 
As I conlfimplale Ihe jgraT\deur ojilie piclure 1 would paint. 

Wt\en I rtiyme aiioul the liver. the laufitiinS ''"ipid streain. 

■Wfjose npples seem to sJiivei as Ihey Jlide aridjlow aiidj[leair\. 
Of \\[i wavfs Itjal teat Ilie tioulders ll^at are strewn upon ll^e tlrand 

You will recognize Ifie river in tlje Canyon of llie &and. 

Wt\En 1 write aboii| Itie rriountairi& witti ttieir t^eaib so hjflli and]\oar, 
of ttie cliffs and craggy canyons yi\m \kt waters Tiibli and roar. 

Wl\ea 1 spea>. about Itie walls ttialiise so%h on eittier tjand. 
You will recognizE \\t TocKwoTKintl\e CanyoR of \\[t Grand, 

God was ,goQd lo mate llie mounlaino, the valleys artdt)]? liilli, 
Put tiie rose upon the cactus Vie Tipple on tlje rills, 

But ij I t|ad all \\\z v/ords of all % worlds almy corrirnand, 
1 couldn't paint a picture iif (t|e Canyon oj ti^e Grand 








"^"T ">*^-<'^_*^:^ "^ 



-» -e ^. -^ ^-*— V -'" ^'*^ 




- ^.^ •■- 




IV, 



CLIMATE AND HEALTH 



I TAii AS Onk ok tin; World's GkAxnKsr Sanitariums 
SoMK X()\ 1:1, AM) SiRiKi\(; Facts. 



"We believe it is a duty to live past seventy." — 




grandeur ami loveliness of I 'tab 

scenery have already been touched 

upon, and are so interwoven with its 

mines and meadows, I'lekls, forests, lakes, 

vallevs, and every other feature and interest, 

that they will fmd freciuent nientif)n hereafter. 

It is a tourist's paradise, a true holy land of 

sii^ht-seers and lovers of nature in her sub- 

limest and most entrancing moods, a realm of 

beauty ami a joy forever to the artist soul. 

What of its climate and healthfulness ? 

Climate is not res^ulated by latitude. Ocean cur- 
rents and altitude are potent factors in it. The 
snows of untold ages lie umnelteil on the lofty peaks 
of the Cortlilleras in Me.\ic(^ the Andes in South 
.\merica. and the Himalayas in Hindostan. Alaska, 
in the latitmle of Cireenland, has a climate little 
more rigorous than that of Ohio. Washington and Oregon, in 

iS 



llic lalitiuk- of haicl-lio/.L-n MaiiK- and l)lizzardy I )ak()la, wliere il is niid- 
uiiiur seven nioiUlis of llie year, and very late in the fall the oilier five, 
bask in the sunny mildness of X'irginia and Carolina ; and California, on the 
same parallels wit'i Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma, raises oranges, 
bananas, |)ine-a|)ples, figs, lemons and pomegranates. Ctah. in the latitude 
of Missouri, where the mercury often runs the \vh(jle length of the ther- 
mometer in twenty-four hours, enjcjys a climate as balmy and as ecpiable as 
the airs that breathe over Araby the lUest. Kor fourteen years the mean 
temperature in Salt Lake Cil\- was about l"ifty-lwo degrees, the average 
maximum being ninety-seven degrees, the average minimum minus one, 
ami the mean daily range of the mercury but twenty degrees. Cotton 
grows lu.xuriantly in the southern part of the territory, and all the semi- 
tropical fruits tlourish everywhere within its borders : antl yet there is not a 
day in the year when one cannot, if he will, wallow in a snowdrift fifty feet 
deep, or seat himself on an iceberg a hundred yartls scpiare, by climbing a 
few miles up a mt)untain-side. During the month of August, 1S91, the 
whole eastern and southern j^ortion of the United States, and even the 
vauntedly paradisiacal Northwest, sweltered and seethed with torrid heat. 
Apples baked on the trees around Chicago, that brazenly proclaims itself 
"the great lake-side summer resort of North America." People dieil of 
sunstrokes aiul calorical prostrations from Winnepisseogee to Corpus Christi 
— that is, from Maine to Te.xas. Even in the alleged " glorious summer 
climate" of Minnesota and Dakota, the thermometers boiled over with a 
huiulred and ten to a hundred and fifteen degrees of hideous hotness in the 
shade. Milwaukee refrigerators turned to steam-boilers ; pop-corn poppeil 
instead of sprouting in the Iowa and Missouri hills, and a universal wail of 
sweaty anguish went up to skies of red-hot brass from the whole wretchetl 
land and people. And, in all the time, there was not a night that Salt Lake 
City people did not sleep under blankets, antl not a day when they could 
not see the huge masses of snow on the \N'asatch Mountains glistening 
white and cokl in the August sunshine ; while, at the base of the mountains, 
which slope down almost into the eastern edge of the city, the whole earth 
was hidden in the foliage and fruit and Howers of orchards and vineyards 
aiul ganlens. Low latitude gives heat, and high altitude gives cold ; so 
every fellow can mix his own climate and weather to suit himself. Here, as 
nearly as anywhere else in the temperate zone, might be realizeil that 
boyish ideal oi a home : .V tall, glacier-crested mountain in a tropical 
region. .\t its base, plantations of sugar, coffee, rice, imiigo, and spices ; 
orange, i)alm aiul mango groves ; and forests of mahogany, ebony and rose- 
wood, with myriads of gorgeous-plumaged parrots, toucans and macaws 
Hitting like wingeil bits of rainbows among their leafy boughs. Midway up 
I he sloping side, at an elevation of eight or ten thousand feet, fields of corn, 
wheat, oats and barley: orchards of apples, pears, plums and cherries; 

'9 




meadows of honey-scented clover, 
the hum of bees, the lowing of 
cattle, bubbling springs, coveys of 
(juails, and cooing doves. And at 
the summit a mighty storehouse of 
everlasting snow and ice to cool the 
juleps and tequilla. So that, with a 
tiny inclined railroad ten or fifteen 
miles long, one could slide through 
all climates and seasons, from per- 
petual summer to eternal winter and 
back again, in half an hour, in any 
day of all the year. In Utah the 
torrid feature alone would be lacking 
in this grand climatic climacteric — 
this having, like death, "all seasons 
for one's own." 

Weather-bureau statistics show 
that the sun shines all day over 
three hundretl days in every year in 
L'tah, and there are few of the re- 
maining days in which it does not 
l)righten part of the hours, 'i'here 
are but two places in the I nited 
States, Kl Paso and Santa Fe, where 
observation shows less humiility in 
the atmosphere than at Salt Lake 
City. The air is so dry antl jnire, 
that the carcasses of dead animals 
tlo not putrefy ; they simi:)ly dry up 
without offensive odor. So crystal- 
line is the clearness of the wonderful 
atmosphere, that it is impossible for 
eyes accustomed to less favored re- 
gions to form any correct estimate of 
tlistances out here. No stranger to 
this ethereal purity can realize that 
it is more than a mile or two from 
the Temple Scjuare in Salt Lake City 



>^¥^V^<^. 




to llic summits of llie Wasatch Moun- 
tains, and yi-t thcv are twenty loniL,^ 
miles away. Xo eye, inured to tlie 
atmospheric mnrkiness of New York 
or Chicago, can make the strip of 
blue-green water 'oetween Lake Park 
bathing-beacli and Antelope Island in 
Cireat Salt Lake seem wider than the 
Upper Hudson or Ohio River ; though 
it would take a nine-mile pull to cross 
it at its narrowest place. With its 
marvelou.s commingling of salt-sea air 
anil mountain ozone, with its highness 
anil dryness, with an atmosphere as 
soft and pure as that which fanned the 
cheek of sinlessness in |irimeval par;i- 
dise, Utah is one of the world's great 
natural sanitariums. Catarrh, hay- 
fever and asthma vanish at once 
beneath its balmy influence. Even 
tubercular consumption, in all its ear- 
lier stages, finds sure relief and cure. 
From the strange, Deity-wrought 
alchemies of the mountain sides all 
over the territory burst forth magici.1 
fountains of healing for invalids of 
almost every class. Nearly every 
variety of medicinal waters known to 
humanity is found somewhere in 
this pharmacopeian wonderland. Hot 
Springs, that possess all the virtues of 
those in .\rkansas, pour hissing and 
steaming from the cliffs at Ogden, 
Salt Lake City, C'astilla and a score of 
other places. Lithia Springs, as potent 
as those of Carlsbad or Homburg, and 
sulphur springs of every kind — white, 
red, black, blue and yellow, hot and 
( old — as well as soda, magnesia, alum, 



4' ^ 




HaceJ^ 



;./^^'^^- 



and all the countless species of chalybeate waters. (Ireat Salt Lake itself 
is a twenty-five-hundred-square-miles Bethesda Pool, where no angel's win<j^ 
is needed to stir the healing virtues. 

The sick and enfeebled of every region may here find some specific, 
compounded by the Great I'hysician's own all-wise hand, for their reUef or 
cure. Hundreds, who first came to I'tah, by jirescription of their doctors, 
after having tried Arkansas, Colorado and Xew Mexico, scarcely hoping to 
finil even temporary alleviation of the tortures of disease, now live in 
vigorous rejuvenation to sound the j^raises of the matchless Utah-land, 
which is destined to become one of the grandest health-resort regions of 
the world. 

\Vhat is the one infallible test of the invigorating cjualities of climate, 
atmosphere, and general conditions ? Abundance of children and old j)eopIe; 
and nowhere in America do both more plenteously abound than Utah. The 
old-time Mormon families of twenty, forty, sixty and, in some instances, over 
seventv children each, proclaim in trumpet tones the sturdy vigor and health- 
fulness of the race and region. Pleasant drove, on the Rio (irande Western 
Railway, with a total poinilation of twenty-three hundred, has eight hundred 
and sixty-two school children, and at least four hundred more under the 
school-going age ; and Kphraim, with twenty-two hundred population, has 
over eight hundred school children, anil three hundred and seventy-eight of 
younger growth. Salt Pake City is the only place of fifty thousand people 
in the I'nited States, if not in the world, where baby-wagons are importeil 
by the train-load, and where they have the right-of-way over even the 
electric cars. 

Antl "extremes meet," for old people swarm everywhere. .\ (|uick-witted 
and nimble-footed old lady of eighty-three recently said to a newspajier 
correspondent : " We Mormons believe it is a duty to live past seventy ; " 
and hosts of them discharge the "duty" without half trying. "Old Polks' 
Day" is a LItah Mormon institution, which might well be made national in 
its scope and observance. It was establishetl by Bishop Hunter, of the Mor- 
mon Church, who died at the age of ninety years. It comes on the twenty- 
second of June, and is observed as a general holiday. An excursion is given 
to people of seventy years and upwanls, winding up with a bantpiet, a 
dance, and a generous distribution of presents. In 1S87, when Salt Pake 
City hatl but about thirty thousand poi^ulation, she sent seven hundred and 
fifty of these ancient jollifiers, over the Rio C.rande Western Railway, to 
Ogden. Of the number, a hundred ;ind twelve ranged in age from eighty 
to ninety-seven .\ seventy-year-oKl jiapa, trundling a baby-chariot, with 
the springy tread of a yoiuig game-rooster, is no uncommon sight on city 
street or country road. 

Health, vigor, all glories of air, and climate, and human robustitutle — 
Utah has them, and to spare. 



_ «L _ ^ .<~j3r>v^ lA , , 



-Jlf-r; 






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i- 












TUTAHS BEST CROP'.:; 




V. 



AGRICULTURAL AND PASTORAL. 



TnK Marvklous Ff-rtilitv ok Utah Soil — Some 
Astonishing 1 1. lustrations. 




n() I'ROPERLV cunstituted man could ever 
asiiire to win fame as a successor of Anania 







deliberately 
as. And yet 
he, who sets out to tell the simplest, 
unsandpapered and unvarnished 
truths in regard to Utah, as a 
farmer-land, a home-land, fore- 
dooms himself to go galloping 
r- down the crookedest byways of 
■s^-^ public estimation, as a compeer of 
->- Sapphira's luckless spouse, and all 
'-- " the other puissant liars of ancient 
and modern days. But Utah truth 
is mighty, and must be told — even though he who tells 
it finds himself nailed by the ears to the pillory-posts 
of popular misjudgment. as a marvel of monumental 
mendacity. 
y •. ;, /'Hj'v' (^ne may have seen the valley of the Nile, forages 

'^'s's.v^ " the granary of the world." He may have roamed amid 
the rich plantations of the Caribbean shores, where the wondrous 
soil yields almost spontaneously every grain, grass, vegetable, 
fruit and fabric necessary for human sustenance and lu.xury. 
He may have roamed delighted over the sea islands of (ieorgia 
and Carolina, and the romance-haunted Teche region of Louisiana, "the 
land of Evangeline," where nature riots in wild lu.xuriance of production. 
He may have traversed the fertile Scioto Valley, the paradise of Ohio ; and 
the far-famed Red River ^'alley of Dakota, with its mighty wheat-field.^ 
stretching away till, all around, the blue sky meets the heads of golden grain. 
He may have grown familiar with all the so-called garden-spots of earth : 



/ 






but there are still aniazciiicius ini him — in L'tah. ( )n all the beauteous, pen- 
dent <,H()l)e, no fairer, richer realm unfolds itself to tempt the anj^els down. 
No mit;hti(.'r trtasurc-liouses of royal ore rear their jirouil heads heavenward 
in anv land or zone. No more overflowingly bounteous, golden grainfields 
or heavier-laden vines and fruit-trees ever gladdened the heart and pocket 
of sun-browneil husbamlman with huiulreil-fold harvests. No greener 
pastures ever feasted the frolicsome mule-colt, or fattcil the f(»v,tivc gentle- 
man-calf. 

Here. Isaiah's millennial rhapsoily of prediction llnds literal fulfillment. 
The v.iklerness and the solitary jilace have been mad.e glad, and the desert 
does rejoice and blossom as a rose. Where no water is. L'tah soil is the 
picture of desolation. Nothing grows but cactus, grease weed, jirairie dogs 
and Jack-rabbits, 'i'urn on the water and a garden blooms. You touch the 
water button, and (ioil and nature do the rest — and do it gloriously. All 
farming is by irrigation, and where every farmer makes his own season and 
("ontrols his own rain, crop failures are unknown. There has never been one 
in Utah. No rain on the new mown hay. no drouth when the grain heads 
are filling. Water in abundance just when and where it is needed, and never 
and nowhere else. The soil is inexhaustible. No artificial fertilization has 
ever been used. Manure heaps are burned. Fields in the Salt Lake valley 
that have been crt)pped incessantly for forty years yield annually from fifty 
to seventy-five bushels of wheat, from si.v to ten tons of Lucerne clover and 
from fwii hmidred to nine luiiulred bushels of potatoes to the acre, and every- 
thing else in proportion. 

The official figures of the Nalioiral Department of .\griculture show that 
the average wheat crop of the country is about twelve bushels to the acre, 
ami that in the much-vauntetl grain belt of Dakota it is scarcelv thirteen 
bushels to the acre. In I'taii si.xty to seventy bushels to the acre is an 
ordinary yiekl. In 1SS9, the ".American .Agriculturist "' prize for the largest 
yield of wheat to the acre in the United States was awarded to William 
(iibby, whose farm is a short distance south of Salt Lake City. His crop, 
raised on measured ground and every ilctail attested by reliable witnesses, 
was eighty-four bushels and ten pountis to the acre. John H. White, four 
miles north of Salt Lake Uity. in 1X90, raised on twenty acres of land nine- 
teen hiHulred and twenty bushels o{ oats, or ninety-six bushels to the acre. 
On the same land, the year before, he raised one hundred and four bushels 
to the acre. W. D. Major, near liouniiful, a little place that is certainly 
well nameil. north of Salt Lake City, in 1 S90. raised ninety bushels of barley 
to the acre. Utah does not claim to be a corn country, because many other 
croi)s are so much more profitable, but W. I). Major has recently raised fifty 
bushels of white llint corn to the acre ; and Hailey cV Son, si.xty bushels of 
yellow corn to the ac re. In 1S90, Thomas l-'arrar, near (ireen River Station 
on the Rio (irande ^\'eslern Railwav. raised a hundred and twelve l)ushels 




V- 



K ,f%^ r^ 





>A 



^^r^ 




to the acre. Richard Carlisle, of Mill Creek, six miles south of Salt Lake 
City, in 1890, with irrigation from an artesian well, raised nine hundred and 
forty-seven bushels of potatoes to the acre, and sold them at eighty cents a 
bushel, realizing in cash $767.60 an acre for one year's crop. Mr. Culmer, 
at Pleasant drove, thirty miles south of Salt Lake City, cleared $1,200 an 
acre on strawberries in a single season. John IL White, whose hundred-and- 
four-l)ushels-t()-lhe-acre oats crop has already been mentioned, in 1890 cut 
three crops of alfalfa or Lucerne clover from his meadow, amounting to 
seven tons to the acre. He sold it in the Salt Lake market at fourteen 
dollars a ton, making ninety-eight dollars an acre in cash for one season's 
hay crop. Four crops of alfalfa are frecpiently cut in a season, and from 
seven to ten tons is a common yield. 

But why multiply such instances ? livery one of those given is ofiicially 
attested by the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce, and volumes might 
be filled with similar illustrations of the fiction-surpassing fertilit\- of this 
wonderland of husbandry. Call the roll of products and there is none that 
can be raised in the temperate zone which does not reach perfection here. 
Earth is absolutely wanton in fecundity. Rye yields an average of from 
sixty to seventy bushels to the acre ; turnips, from four hundred to six 
hundretl bushels ; carrots, from seven hundred to a thousand bushels ; apri- 
cots, three hundred and fifty to five hundretl bushels ; peaches; from five 
hundred to seven hundreil bushels ; apples, four hundred ancl fifty to six 
hundred l)ushels ; pears, five hundred bushels ; plums, from three hundred 
to four hundred bushels ; blackberries, raspberries, currants and gooseber- 
ries, from three hundred to three hundred and fifty bushels to the acre, and 
everything else in like profusion. Cherries grow wikl in great abundance. 
Hops are indigenous to the soil. Xectarines Hourish cvervwhere. and figs 
are raised in the southern valleys. Cotton grows luxuriantly in the lower 
counties, and a cotton mill established by the Mormons at NN'ashington has 
long been in successful operation. It uses ai)<)ut 75,000 pounds of 
cotton yearly and manufactures good domestics. 

Li the Chamber of Commerce at Salt Lake Citv is a won- 
derful collection of cabinets and cases, that were sent east 
in 1887 in "The Ctah Lxposition Cm," which traveled 
twelve thousand miles, ancl was visited by over two 
hundred thousaiul people. Li the collection 
there are jars of plums fully as large as ordi- 
nary eastern pear-; ; gooseberries as large as 
full-sized plums ; ami strawberries as big 
as large tomatoes, many of them being 
from till to twelve inclies in cir- 
i'^' ' : ( umference, and thirteen of them 
"S'fKa ' Idling a (]uart jar. Sugar beets 

28 




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V ! 
















'^■^#'^V^^ 



.IV , r.:^*'^'ti' 



'i^^^'J * 






^f^h 



% 







weighing thirty-five pounds each, mangel wurzels weighing forty-eight pounds 
and Irish potatoes weighing from eight to eight and a half pounds apiece, 
are included in the collection. Potatoes, twelve or fifteen of which make a 
bushel, are common in the markets. Melons of all kinds grow to great size, 
and are deliciously flavored. The very streets are shaded with fruit trees, 
and the humblest adobe cottage is hidden in its wealth of apple, pear and 
plum, apricot, peach anil nectarine trees, bending beneath their luscious 
freightage. Salt Lake is always compared to the Dead Sea, but no " Dead Sea 
apples," fair to the eye. but ashes to the lips, grow upon its blessed shores 

Stock-raising in Utah involves but little care or labor. Pasture is found 
the year round, and all domestic animals thrive on the native grasses of the 
mesas and valleys. There are now in the territory about five hundred 
thousand cattle, two hundred and fifty thousand horses and mules, a hun- 
dred thousand hogs, and two and a half million sheep, worth, all told, 
something near thirty million dollars. 

Utah produced in 1890 about twelve million pounds of wool, of which 
one million pounds was manufactured in home mills and factories, and the 
rest exported. In the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce are forty samples 
of merino wool furnished by Charles Crane, of Kanosh, Kanab County, 
president of the L'tah Wool C.rowers' Association. The forty fleeces from 
which the samples were taken weighed from forty-one to si.\ty-seven jiounds 
each. Think of it I Si.xty-seven pounds of merino wool clipped from a 
single sheep — more than a whole sheep, bones, mutton, tallow, hide and 
all, often weighs in the hapless East. 

With a soil of such matchless fertility ; with a climate unsurpassed and 
unsurpassable ; with ten thousand square miles of timber lands ; with 
boundless ranges for flocks and herds ; with exhaustless mines in a hundred 
rugged mountain-sides; and with millions of acres yet subject to Government 
entry, what does L'tah lack to rentier it the ideal land of the farmer and 
home-seeker? It is, in the language of Holy Writ, "A land of brooks of 
water ; of fountains and depths, tljat spring out of valleys and hills ; a land 
of wheat and barley ; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarce- 
ness ; thou shalt not lack anything in it." 

Utah is an 87,750-square-mile cornucopia. 




VI 



UTAH MINES 



TnK Amazim; Minkru. Wkai.tii and PossimiiriKs oi tmk 
'rKKKiroRV — A TKri-: Hunax/a Land. 







'<''^^ 



^'fC 



11' THK great industry of Utah thus far has 
been its mining. Its fabulous riches of 
metal and mineral are destined to make this as 
yet but half-e.\plored territory the gathering- 
place of capitalists and fortune seekers from 
every land beneath the sun. When fully 
known and developed, they will eclipse all the 
dazzling miracles of .Maddin and his magical 
lamp, and take their place among the wonders 
of the world. They will teach the children 
of this generation to smile at tiie fairy-tales 
that amazed their fathers and mothers, as 
trivial and tame, for they will be able to rub 
daily against-the jewel-clad creatures of inhnitely more marvelous stories in 
real life. 

The greatest mines of earth are yet to be opened in the .Vmerican (Ireat 
West. Mountains of gold and silver ore, beside which all the famed riches 
of the Comstock 1-oile will some day sink to beggars' pence, yet rear their 
proud heads to heaven untouched by pick or spade or drill. The veritable 
treasure-hou.ses of the gods yet await the enterprise and muscle of the sturdy 
prospectors and miners, who are de.stined, and that ere long, to fire the 
avarice and the envy of the world with their Midas-surpassing wealth of 
solid ducats. From .Maska to Nicaragua, the whole vast system of Rocky 
Mountains and Cordilleras is an almost unbroken ore and mineral bed. Not 
one ten-thousandth part of it has ever felt the tap of a prospector's hammer. 
The surface dirt of California, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, .\rizona 
and New Me.\ico mines is hardly broken ; the glittering hoards are scarcely 
touched. The great bonanza fortunes are yet to be made. 




Although Utah niining is in the 
ruffled-cap and nursing-bottle stage 
of its existence, in its earliest in- 
-. fancy the territory has already pro- 
duced a grand aggregate of about 
$175,000,000 in gold, silver, copper 
' and lead ; or more than the whole 
assessed valuation of such states as 
Wyoming and North Dakota. Ac- 
cording to the official report of the 
I uited States I rca.sury Department for 1890, Utah now stands third among 
all the forty-nine states and territories of the Union, as a producer of the 
precious metals. With its magnificent yield for the year of $14,346,783 in 




gold, silver, copper and lead, it leads California, 
with a total of §13,370,406 ; and Nevada, with 
l)iit §8,543,800. Its yearly product is more than 
fonr times as great as that of all the mines of 
the famous Black Hills of Dakota ; and it is 
outranked only by Montana with a total of 
$40,695,723 ; and Colorado, with $34,028,701. 
Its yield of four metals in 1890 amounted to 
i?V^Rfrji/^<^ "1'^/ nearly one-third of the entire assessed value of 

I ^V*..,.* .,4r all real estate and personal property within its 

^^ I borders in 1888. There are mines in every 

county of the territory. Every mountain range and spur is ribbed with 
ore and mineral. 

The accidental turning of a loose stone among the bushes in Ontario 
Gilch, in Summit county, led to the discovery of one of the world's greatest 
bonanzas. The prospect-hole was sold to a firm of which the late Senator 
Hearst, of California, was a member, for §30,000 ; and, as the Ontario mine, 
has since produced over §25,000,000 in silver, and paid §12,200,000 in divi- 
dends. Its mill and mining plant cost §2,700,000, and its annual pay-roll 
amounts to nearly §600,000. During 1890 it paid out in wages and salaries, 
for supplies, and in dividends, §2,017,055. The Daly mine, adjoining the 
Ontario, in 1890 produced §834,818, and paid §450,000 in dividends, making 
an aggregate of §1,762,500 in dividends since February, 1886. There are 
a hundred smaller mines in the same district, all more or less developed. 
The Crescent has yielded §1,500,000. The Woodside produced §444,000 in 
1889. The Samson turned out about §250,000 worth of ore in 1890 ; and 
scores of others only need the capital and energy to convert them into 
bonanzas great or small. Park City, the metropolis of the district, is a pic- 
turesque place of five thousand population, which has no debt, and at the 
end of 1890 had twelve thousand dollars in its treasury. Its main street is 
seven thousand five hundred feet, or about a mile and a half, above the 
level of the sea. Its water sujiply is pij^ed from Highland Lake, a liquid 
jewel of the Wasatch mountains, ten acres in extent, forty feet deep, and 
two thousand feet above the city. The camp produced in 1890 a grand 
total of 153,031,650 pounds of ore, an increase of 6,120,740 pounds over 1889. 
Of this, 63,297,650 poumls were shipped by rail to distant smelters, and 
89,734,000 pounds were reduced at the home mills. A single chimney of 
ore at the east foot of the Grampian mountain in Heaver county, yielded 
over §13,000,000 in four years, and made the Horn Silver mine famous 
throughout the world. There are innumerable mines in the same region 
that only need proper work to make them rich producers. 

.\t Alta. on Little Cottonwood Canyon, in Salt Lake county, almost in 
sight of Salt Lake City, is the renowned I'.mnui mine, which wrecked the 



33 




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VZ^\ 




reputation of one who had held high positions in the mihtary, political ana 
diplomatic service of the United States. An amazingly rich body of ore 
had been struck. For a long time the mine shipped a hundred tons a day 
of ore that ran from two hundred to seven hundred ounces of silver to the 
ton. General Schenck was then minister to England. He and his associates 
capitalized the mine in London at $5,000,000. The new company took out 
$1,500,000 in a few months, and then came a collapse. The ore disappeared, 
vanished like a fog-bank. The mine ceased producing. It looked like a 
gigantic swindle. General Schenck was ruined. The United States Minister 
to the Court of St. James had to fly from England to escape prosecution. 
It was the sensation of the day. Recent investigations and discoveries seeia 
to indicate that the apparent failure was due to mistakes in the working of 
the mine. E.xperts say the company ran off the main ore-body, and fol- 
lowed side-slips. After years of loss a number of new strikes have been 
made, and the mine is again producing ore that runs one hundred and ten 
ounces of silver to the ton. 

The Flagstaff, a neighbor of tlie Emma, and also owned by an English 
company, formerly produced from a hundred to two hundred tons a day of 
low-grade ore. Then the ore body was lost for a long time, and has only 
recently been re-discovered after years of labor and e.xpense. The mine 
is now turning out ore that runs from twenty to forty ounces of silver to 
the ton. 

There were, at one time, nearly a hundred producing mines in this camp, 

but when tlie Emma and the Flagstaff ore- 
bodies seemed to fail, work on most of them 
\ was abandoned. The late discoveries in 

-\ the two famous mines have started 

operations on some of these long- 
/f^^ neglected properties, and rich strikes 
■'■^ -• and a renewed boom are 

among every day's possibil- 
ities. Ten mines in the 











camp, durinjj 1S90, shipped nine luiiidifil and ciy;hty tons of ore lliat yielded 
from tliirty-two to two hundretl anil seventy-five oimces of silver to the ton 
— averajj^ing ninety and a half ounces. 

On Big C'ottonwood Canyon, in Salt Lake county, the Maxfiekl mine has 
recently become a dividend-payer. In the last six months of 1S90 it pro- 
duced eleven hundred tons of ore, running seventy ounces of silver to the 
ton. The Congo shows ore running forty j^er cent, lead, sixty-five ounces 
of silver, and from five to ten dollars in gold to the ton. The Keed & Ben- 
son mine has yielded $300,000 ; and there are a number of other mines that 
promise big bundles of bullion. 

On Snake Creek, in Utah county, many rich prospects are being opened 
up, the great drawback being the lack of transportation. There is no rail- 
road communication and the wagon road is steep and rugged. The South- 
ern Tier mine has recently made some shipments of ore that runs a hundred 
and fifty ounces of silver to the ton ; and the Xewell, Steamboat and 
Levigneur claims are showing handsomely. 

On American Fork, in Utah county, there are more than a hundred mines 
in all stages of develojiment. The North Star, from mere exploring woik, 
shipped in 1S90 over thirty tons of ore, that ran in silver and lead about 
eighty dollars to the ton. The Flora shows surface ore running from eighty 
to a hundred and fifty ounces of silver to the ton, and from twenty-five to 
forty per cent. lead. The New Idea has a vein from eight to twenty-three 
feet thick. One shipment of its ore brought a hundred and seven dollars a 
ton. The Osborn No. 2 has turned out some ore that shows six hundred 
ounces of silver to the ton. The Milkmaid, Treasure-Consolidate, Kalama- 
zoo, Pittsburg, Chicago and Superior and Silver-Bell are all in high grade 
ore, and there are dozens more only awaiting the touch of capital to put 
them among the great mines of the country. 

In Wasatch county, valuable bodies of ore have been struck in the 
Glencoe, Wilson and Barrett, Lowell, McHenry, Hawkeye, Boulder, Free 
Silver, Wasatch and numerous others. 

Twenty-seven miles southwest of Salt Lake City, on the Rio Cirande 
Western Railway, in the wilil and picturesipie Bingham Canyon of the 

Ocpiirrh mountains, lies the first mining district 
organized in I'tah, and the Old Jordan mine in 
this canyon was the first mine discovered in the 
territory. Its oxiilized surface ores, at its inter- 
section with the South Galena, yielded §2,000,000 ; 
and a million tons of quartz, that will run twenty 
dollars a ton, now lie in sight in the same locality, 
unmined, unhonored and unsung, because the gold 
and silver in it are so combined that no method 
has vet been devised to work it without losing one 




or the other. Less than a mile north of the Jordan, on Carr Fork, is a 
mountain side containing hundreds of thousands of tons of the same queer 
quartz, hearing about ten dollars in gold and ten in silver to the ton. YuWy 
1,500,000 tons of quartz lying in plain view, every ton of it carrying twenty 
dollars in gold and silver, or a total of at least $30,000,000, only waiting 
for the right man, with the right process of e.xtraction, to come along and 
make himself a rival of the Rothschilds. 

But Bingham has millions of tons of reducible ores. The Ocjuirrh moun- 
tains, which rise to a height of 10,500 feet, are literally bulged out with ores 
that are easily and cheaply mined and milled It has produced more silver- 
lead ores than any other camp in Utah, and is to-day the second camp in 
tonnage of ore shipped, being outranked only by Tintic. The mineral belt 
is about si.\ miles long, and from a half-mile to two miles wide, and it is 
nearlv all more or less developed. 

The camp shipped 33,822 tons of ore in 1890, of which the South Cialena 
shipped 9,620 tons ; the Brooklyn, 8,092 tons ; Yo Semite No. 2, 2,610 tons ; 
Old Telegraph, 2,500; Spanish, 2,100; Niagara, 1,500; Lead and Yo 
Semite No. i, 1,396 ; L'^tah, 1,216 ; and the Winamuck, York, Highland, 
Di^on, Rough and Ready, Silver Hill, Markham, Silver (Gauntlet, Buckeye, 
Silver Shield, Last Chance and Fireclay, from 102 to 715 tons, each. Forty 
other mines sent out a total of 1,423 tons. 

The South (ialena, Brooklyn, Niagara and \'o Semite have concentrating 
mills, and there are gold mills on the Stewart and Stewart No. 2 ; for, in 
addition to all the vast deposits of silver, there is an extensive field of free- 
milling gold ore, running from five to fifteen dollars to the ton. 

Among a lifetime's experiences of travel, by every conveyance from an 
ocean steamer or a limited express train to a Carolina bull-chariot or an 
African dromedary, there is nothing more novel than a ride in the South 
Calena ore-cars from the mine to the Rio (irande Western Railway station. 
Thirty iron cars, each carrying two tons of ore or concentrates, arranged in 
couples, with a combination engineer, conductor and brakeman, all in one, 
to every two c ars. Four thousainl feet descent in four miles, over a track 
so crooked that a black snake could hardly follow it without breaking his 
back. It is like riding a twisty streak of lightning down from the cloud,s 
to earth. 

The Bingham miiu-^ give eiupli)) nieiii to I'loni nllceii hundred to two 
thousand men, and the production is constantly and rajjidly increasing. 
Many important discoveries of ore have been made during the year ending 
in August, 1891, and over two hundred new mines have been located in the 
district. 

Ihe Dry Canyon and ()phir mines, in Tooele county, during 1890 shii)ped 
between four anil five thous*aiul tons of ore that ran fifty-three per cent, 
lead, twenty-three ounces of silver and one dollar in gokl to the ton. 

;8 



1! 



v-r*^ 




A land whose stones are 



iron, and out of whose hiilS tnou mayost oig or 



— Deot. will. 9. 



The principal producers are the Honerine, Brooklyn, Elgin, Belfast, Trade 
Wind, Miner's Delight, Utah Gem, Monarch and Northern Delight, and 
the Buckhorn group. 

Second in size and importance of all the mining camps in Utah, being 
surpassed only by the great bonanza district, which includes the Ontario 

and Daly mines, is Tintic in Juab county. 
It lies on the western slope of the Oquirrh 
mountains, about ninety miles a little 
west of south from Salt Lake City. It 
consists of a vast mineral belt or 
zone, or of three or four parallel 
ones. This great ore-channel is 
nine miles long from north to south, 
and one and a quarter miles wide 
from east to west. It runs solidly 
across to Rush Valley, and there 
sinks, and is held by experts to 
reappear at Bingham, thirty or 
forty miles away on an air line. 
'I'lie camp contains many wonder- 
ful mines, and new discoveries are 
being constantly made. 

In 1S90 the camp shi[)ped 76,497 tons of ore 
that ran from fifty to a hundred and fifty dollars 
to the ton, and the shipments are steadily and rapidly 
increasing. The largest shippers for that year were 
the Bullion-Beck, 29,509 tons ; Eureka Hill, 20,640 ; 
Mammoth, 9,590 ; Centennial-Eureka, 3,668 ; Trea- 
sure, 3,200 ; and Keystone, 1,700, while the Julian I-ane, Eagle, 
Northern Spy, Tesora, Siou.x, Sunbeam, Carissa and Governor 
shipped from 103 to 798 tons each. The total shipments for 
the first half of 1891 have run about 250 tons a day. 
The Eureka Hill could have been bought a few years ago for a song. 
It is now shipping a hundred tons a day of ore that nets about fifty dollars 
a ton, or something like $150,000 a month. Its monthly ])ay-roll is about 
$25,000, and all other expenses say $10,000 a month ; making a total 
monthly expenditure of $35,000, antl leaving a trifle of $1 15,000 a month to 
be ilivided among its fortunate owners. It is capitalized in ten thousand 
shares, of which John Q. Packard, of Salt Lake City, and his brother's 
estate hold five thousand and one shares ; Jacob Lawrence's estate, three 
thousand five hundred ; and Justice Held, of the United States Supreme 
Court, and his son-in-law, George W. Whitney, fourteen hundred and ninety- 
nine. So from this one young mining camji in Utah a judge of the highest 




40 



tribunal in the new world rakes in about $16,000 dollars a month , that is 
doul)le his annual salary every thirty days. 

The Centennial- luireka has had a romantic experience. A few years ago 
its owners were almost driven to the wall to meet a note for §10,000, and 
offered half the mine as security for the money. They fmally succeeded m 
borrowing it, but had to get an extension of time upon it. Three days 
afterward they shijiped two car-loads of ore that netted them §27,000. It is 
now paying §60,000 a month in dividends. 

The Mamnu)th, across the mountain, about a mile and a half southeast of 
the Eureka Hill, is .said to have been traded some years ago for a few head 
of Texas steers. During 1890, it paid twelve regular dividends, and four 
extra ones, of §40,000 each, a total of §640,000 for the year. Two car-loads 
of its ore recently netted §78,000. One mass of fifty pounds, which was 
taken out and sent east, was nearly half pure gold. In this mine free 
gold is found in horn silver, a combination rarely, if ever, met with any- 
where else. 

By far the heaviest ore-shipper in the camp is the Bullion-Beck, which 
adjoins the Eureka Hill. Captain S. H. Smith, its superintendent, was for 
twenty years on the Comstock Lode, and had charge of the famous Belcher 
mine from its opening to its virtual collapse on its three-thousand-foot level, 
during which time §35,000,000 were taken out of it. The Bullion-Beck lias 
a superb plant, including hoisting-works, air-compresser, dynamos, black- 
smith and carpenter shops, assay office, and fire-apparatus ; the whole costing 
over three hundred thousand dollars. The ore runs from forty-five to a 
hundred ounces of silver, and from fifteen to twenty-five per cent, of lead, 
to the ton. The mine is capitalized at §1,000,000, and in 1890 paid §420,000 
in dividends, or forty-two per cent , besides paying for all improvements and 
additions to machinery. 

The Gemini group, just across the gulch north of the Bullion-Beck, in- 
cludes the Keystone, Excelsior, Red Bird and a number of others. Captain 
John McCrystal, the superintendent and part-owner, is also superintendent 
of the Eureka Hill, and of the Eagle and Godiva groups. The Gemini has 
shipped during 1S91, about fifty tons a day of ore that nets in the neighbor- 
hood of fifty dollars a ton. 

The Eagle is a new mine, but five hundred and ninety tons of its ore, 
shipped between September 21, 1890, and August i, 1891, netted §45.000, 
after paying in freights and for reduction about §17,000 ; giving an average 
yield of §1 10 to the ton. 

The Godiva shows ore carrying twenty-five dollars a ton in gold. The 
Northern Spy produced §400,000 above its first level. The Plutus, Snow- 
flake, Sioux, Iron Blossom, Turk, Hungarian, Daisy, Lucky Boy, Belcher 
group. Alamo, Golden Ray group and a legion of others are all workmg m 
ore that is rich enough to satisfy any reasonable would-be bonanza-kmg. 

41 



The Dragon mine, during 1890, shipped to the smelters near Salt Lake City 
6,050 tons of iron ore for fluxing purposes. Nearly all the Tintic mines are 
worked by their owners or leasers, who, with few exceptions, started in poor 
men. The fame of its riches has begun to reach the outer world. New 
men are pouring in ; new claims are being located in every direction ; long- 
abandoned "prospects" are being re-opened and worked; a branch of 
the Rio Grande Western Railway is nearing the camp as rapidly as men and 
money can push it ; and there is every indication of a great boom through- 
out the whole region. Its marvelous wealth, and the opportunities it offers 
for men of nerve and enterprise, cannot be over-estimated. 

Jay Gould has never been charged with extravagance or over-enthusiasm 
in his estimates of anything belonging to somebody else. On the twenty- 
fourth of August, 1891, he and his party, irxluding his two daughters 
and two of his sons, with a special train of four cars, ran into Eureka, 
the capital of the Tintic district, to the astonishment of the citizens. 
The wh(jle party, including the Wall-street Wizard, made a tour of the 
Bullion-Beck mine and of the camp in general, and expressed in glowing 
terms their admiration of its rich possibilities. In an account of the 
visitation. The Salt Lake City Tribune of the next day said : "Mr. Gould 
expressed his regret that time would not permit him to make a personal 
inspection of all the great mines He made the remark that what first 
attracted his attention to Tintic was an interview with Mr. Pat. Donan, 
reported in the Salt Lake papers, wherein Mr. Donan had said that 
Eureka was surrounded by mountains of silver. Mr. Gould remarked that 
Mr. Donan's statement did not convey the half, as there were not only 
mountains but valleys of silver. When informed as to the present out- 
put and future possibilities of the camp, Mr. Gould was utterly amazed, 
and said it was no wonder the Rio Grande Western was building into 
Tintic." 

That is testimony from one whose eyes were never known to exaggerate 
the belongings of "the other fellow," and whose tongue rarely indulges in 
enthusiastic phrases on any subject. New as it is, Tintic is one of the 
world's greatest mining camps, and has in its still but half-explored moun- 
tain sides the making of a thousand millionaires. Its ores are said by 
experts to be almost identical witli those of Leadville, and they are practi- 
cally limitless in cjuantity. 

West Tintic, in Tooele county, has fifty or more partially developed mines, 
all of which show fine bodies of high-grade ore ; that in the Stonewall 
Jackson running six hundred and forty ounces of silver, and ten dollars and 
forty cents in gold, to the ton. 

Marvelous stories of rich discoveries have recently come from Deep 
Creek, below Tintic ; and Marysvale in Piute county, toward which the San 
Pete branch of the Rio Grande Western is rapidly pushing its way, bids fair 

4^ 



to beconif a wonder, even in I'tali. I'lic I lonicstakc is in ore that yi<'ltl-s 
six liuntired ilollars to the ton in silver, both anlinionial and native. 

The SliiT u^roup has lieen shippint; ore eii^hty or ninety miles by wagon to 
a railroail, but its ore, yieldin<j[ from one to two hniub-ed doUars to the ton, 
will stand even that expensive mode of handling. 

The (liles mines, six in number, show a seven-foot vein of low grade 
free-milling ore. 'l"he Plata ilel Mina shows ore that runs nine hundred 
ounces of silver, and twenty-five dollars in gold, to the ton. The Triangle 
ore runs twenty-five ounces in silver, and twenty-five per cent. lead. The 
Crystal has immense bodies of carbonate aiul galena ore, averaging fortv 
ounces of silver, ten dollars in gold, and thirty per cent, of lead to the ton. 
The Clyde and Crown Point ores run from ten to four hundred ounces of 
silver, and from five to fifty per cent, copper t(j the ton. The Antelope is 
getting out large quantities of ore yielding twenty ounces of silver and five 
dollars in gold to the ton. The region is apparently one of the richest ever 
discovered in the Territory, and, with the coming of the railroad, is destined 
to witness a tremendous mining boom. 

.Vway (.lown in Washington county, cornering on Nevada and Aruona, 
large bodies of silver ore, chiefly in the form of chlorides, have been found. 
There, far from railroads and the noise of " the madding crowd," two 
comiKinies, the Christy and the Stormont, have worked along quietlv, 
and taken out fwe million ounces of fine silver. 'I'he region has been 
but little explored, 



reason to doubt that 
will ultimately be 
mountains a n tl 
A wild rush has 
August, 1891, to a 
county, north of 
ing discoveries of 
made. A town of a 
sprang up in two 
christened '"La 
Spanish for "The 
have been filled with 
lously rich strikes and 
stories are true, an- 
camp is assured. So, 
most to its southern- 




and there seems no 
many valuable mines 
found among its 
gulches. 

taken place, durii.g 
region in Cache 
Ogden, where amaz- 
silver have just been 
thousand inhabitants 
weeks, aiul has been 
Plata," which is 
Silver." The papers 
accounts of fabu- 
finds, and if half the 
other great bonanza 
from its northern- 
most bounds, Utah 



is a mighty treasury of silver and goUlen opportunities and possibilities. 

Utah is one of the world's l)t)nanza-Iands, a realm of realization for the 
dreams of gokl and silver hunters, a prospectors' and miners' true Kl 
Dorado. 



43 



VII. 



MISCELLANEOUS MINING. 



Unlimited Variety of Utah's Mineral Resources- 
EvERVTHiNo Found i;ut Tin. 




I'T Wrril all its mighty mountain treasure-houses 
of royal ore, gold and silver are but two items 
in the long and glorious inventory of Utah's 
mineral wealth. Of all the metals and minerals 
in human use, tin is perhaps the only one not 
)und in workable quantities within the borders of 
is wonderland. Run over but part of the almost 
idless list : Alum is found in Utah and Salt Lake 
)unties ; aluminum, in Davis and Morgan counties ; 
imony, in Box Elder, Piute and Garfield counties ; 
agates, in endless quantities, and of great beauty, in 
Emery county ; arsenic in Washington and Iron coun- 
ties ; bismuth, in Juab, San Pete, and Morgan counties ; 
copper in Juab, Miller and Salt Lake counties; cop- 
"^ peras, in Utah county ; coal, exhaustless in quantity, 

and unsurpassed in quality, in Sunmiit, Utah, San Pete, Emery, and 
Iron counties ; carbonate of soda, by thousands of tons, in Salt 
Lake county ; chalcedony and chrysolite, in various regions ; cinnabar 
or quicksilver, in San Pete county ; Fuller's earth, in many places ; 
garnets, in Tooele county ; gold, in Salt Lake, Juab, Tooele, and other 
counties ; granite, in Salt Lake, San Pete, and every other county in the 
territory ; graphite or plumbago, in Utah county ; gypsum, in Juab, San 
Pete and Washington counties ; iron, hematite and magnetic, in Davis, 
Morgan, Juab, Cache and Iron counties ; jasper, in numerous places ; jet, in 
San Pete and Emery counties ; kaolin, in Utah, Salt Lake, Davis, Tooele 
and Sevier counties ; manganese, in Utah and Tooele counties ; malachite, 
in Juab, Beaver and several other counties; marble, of every color and the 
finest quality, in many localities ; mica, in Davis, Salt Lake and Garfield 



44 



coiinlies ; nitre, in vast quantities, in various regions ; oolite, in San I'cte 
county ; opals, o( many kinds, nearly everywhere ; ozokerite, or mineral 
wax. in Utah, Wasatch and iMnery counties; rock-salt, millions of tons, in 
Jual). San Pete, Sevier anil other coiuities ; saltpetre, in Utah county ; silver 
in nearly if not cpiite every county in the territory ; sulphur, enough to 
sujiply the world, in Millard, lieaver ami Utah counties ; topaz, white, yellow 
anil blue, in Pooele. Box l-'Jder and various other counties ; tourmaline, in 
many places ; talc, in Utah, l-',incry and I'iute counties ; zincblende and sul- 
phide, in various counties ; alabaster, amethysts, asbestos, asphaltum, azurite, 
basalt, bitumen, bog-iron, cats-eyes, epsomite, lignite, ochres of every hue, 
onyx, ribbon jasper, rose quartz, ruby silver, sardonyx, satin spar, specular 
iron, zincite and eighty-nine other metals and minerals are found in greater 
or less abunilance all over the territory. 

Thousands of square miles are underlaid by coal. Utah could supply a 
nation with fuel for centuries to come. At Scofield and at Castle (iate, on 
the Rio (irande Western Railway, the Pleasant Valley Coal Company, during 
1890, mined nearl}' 250,000 tons of coal equal to the best Pennsylvania 
bituminous article. The vein at Scofield averages fourteen feet in thickness, 
and the mines are simply mountains of coal. At Castle Gate, the company 
has a hundred coke ovens, and in 1890, turned out 10,000 tons of coke, 
With coal unsurpassed in the world, the Castle Gate coke will ultimately be 
found eipial to the best that Connellsvilie ]:)roduces. The Union Pacific 
Company owns coal-mines at Scofield, near those of the Pleasant Valley 
Company, which in 1890, produced about 100,000 tons. The Home Coal 
Comjiany and the Clialk Creek Company have mines near Coalville, on the 
Weber river, in Summit county, that produced 36,400 tons of 
coal in 1890. Salt Lake City used nearly 100,000 tons. C)ne 
of the sights at the World's Fair in Chicago is to be a solid 
block of Pleasant Valley coal, twenty-eight feet thick, twenty- 
eight feet long, and eight feet wide. It will be bound with 
iron bands, carefully padded and boxed in. There are said to 
be in Iron county veins of solid coal a hundred feet in thick- 
ness. Iron abounds everywhere. The Tintic ore runs 
about sixty per cent, metallic iron, and from five to fifteen 
dollars in gold, to the ton. One of the most remarkable ^ 




^S;^j 







^^'^^ 






ctj^r!^ 






•-.■St, 






fo^e^-Qa^G^lt 



deposits of iron ore in the world is in Iron county, which takes its name 
from its vast beds of the most useful of all the metals. It lies in prodi.ijious 
parallel belts, one of which is described as being sixteen miles long by three 
miles wide. Experts declare there are 500,000,000 tons in sight. It runs 
sixty-tw<j percent, metallic iron, with but a trace of sulphur and phosphorus 
When that region of mineral miracles is penetrated by a railroad, as it .soon 
will be by the Rio (Irande Western, the eyes of creation will be made stick 
out past its hat-rim with amazement and admiration. Iron is found in all the 
region about Ogden, in Box l^Ider, Morgan, Cache, and Weber counties : and 
in nearly, if not (juite, every other county in the territory. 

Clreat Salt Luke would supply the world with salt, and never niiss it. .\t 
Salina on the San Pete Valley branch of the Rio Grande Western Railway, 
there are five mountains, vast Wasatch peaks, of solid rock salt, so pure and 
clear that one can read through a block of it, and similar deposits are found 
near Nephi and in a number of other regions. The winds sometimes in a 
single night pile up hundreds of tons of suli)hate of soila on the shores of 
Salt Lake ; and, just below Manti on the Rio (irande Western road, are the 
Saleratus Beds, where for several miles the whole earth is covered with an 
efflorescent soda sufficiently pure for household use. Copperas, almost jjure 
and in large cjuantities, has been found in Spanish Fork Canyon. Roofing 
slate, of unsurpassable quality, and of many colors, abounds on Antelope 
Islanil. Ozokerite, or mineral wax, has been discovered near Soldier Summit, 
on the Rio Grande Western Railway. It is proof against water, air and acids, 
anil can be usetl to render other fabrics equally impervious. It is a perfect 
insulator, and is largely utilized for jihonograph cylinders and cathedral 
candles. In lis natural state it is black anil waxy ; when refined it becomes 
white and almost translucent. No ortlinary heat softens it. The only other 
known dejiosit of it in the world is in Russia, and is said to have yielded 
$500,000,000. Gilsonite, named for the veteran prospector, Sam Gilson, 
who discovereil it, is found in exhaustless (piantities near Price Station, and 
in a number of other places. It is said to be ninety-nine per cent, pure 
asphaltum. Cowboys and hunters bring reports of a great lake of as|ihallum, 
somewhat like that of Trinidail, in the Green River region, in which the cat- 
tle get stuck like flies on sticky fly-paper. Near Agate Statiim, on the Rio 
Cirande Western Railway, are thousands of acres of superb water-agates. 
Some specimens I'wti feet in iliameter, flawless and beautifully tinted, have 
been found ; and among them carnelians, one of which measured five inches 
across. But why go on with the enumeration ? It would rei]uire a volume as 
big as an unabridged dictionary to hold the mere muster-roll of Utah resources 
and products. There is scarcely anything in all the catalogue of human needs 
or greeils that is not supplied in this vast Deily-made storehouse. 



46 



VIII 



BRIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE 



Utah's Prockkss and I'ossir.ii.iriKs — PoiTLAfiox iiii; 
'ri'.RKrioKV Could ^^ASIl,^■ Sri'i-our. 




'rni IS L tall, tile (lem of the Rockies, where all grandeurs 
,>-a ami glories of scene, all charms and salubrities of climate, 
and all riches of soil and forest and mine, unite to form one 
of earth's grandest ganlen-spots. It is a land of majestic 
tlimensions. incomputable resources, and illimitable possibili- 
ties ; a land of gold and silver mountains, of fruit-trees and 
vineyards, of lowing kine and golden grain ; under the feet a 
carpet of ilowers bespangled with gold-dust, and the bluest of 
heavens bending above and resting its arch on the walls of the Sierras. 

^Vith a population as dense as that of Ohio, seventy-five to the square 
mile, Utah, with •'^7,750 scpiare miles of domain, would maintain 6,581,250 
licojilc. \\'ith two hundred ami thirty to the scpiare mile, as in 
Massachusetts, Utah would be an empire of 20,182,500 souls. It y 
now has a population of but 220,932 ; so that all the great / ', 
opportunities of mighty state-building still remain open to everv ^/; 
energetic and enterprising new-comer, and the tide of brain anil 
brawn and capital is already beginning to flow in. The 
assessed valuation of real and jiersonal propertv rose 
from $51,917,31^ in 1889, to $104,758,750 in 1S90; an 
increase of nearly 102 per cent, in a single vear. The 
banking capital increased during the same 
year, from $1,580,000, to $3.951500, an in- 
crease of 150 per cent. : and the de|)osits rose 
from $5,882,213 to $9,572,286, an increa.se of 
63 per cent. There is virtually no debt, and 
the total ta.xation is but seventeen miils on 
the dollar of an assessment at one-fifth valu- 
ation, or about three and one-half mills on 










i^ 




the dollar of real value assessment. There are no delinquent taxes, and 
consequently no delintjuent tax-lists for the newspapers. 'J'he Salt Lake 
V County tax-list for 1S90 amounted to $53<'^,795, all of which was 

r^'^ promjitly paid, except $2,S53 that represented erroneous assessments. 
The Salt Lake City tax-list amounted to $215,709 ; of which all 
but $1,138 was speedily paid in, and the trifling sum unpaid 
represented erroneous or disputed assessments. Could any 
statement, in so few words, give a more 
vivid idea of the prosperity of the region 
and its people ? In the year ending 
June 30, 1890, nearly $5,000,000 was 
spent in new buildings ; and the capital- 
ization of the new mining, manufactur- 
ing, mercantile and miscellaneous cor- 
porations, organized in the Territory 
during the year, reached the enormous 
total of $47,932,000. There are about 
1,200 miles of railroad in the Territory, 
and new lines are being pushed m many 
directions. The whole region shows the 
rush of improvement and prosperity. 

Utah's mines of gold, silver, coi)per 
and lead, in 1890, yielded $14,346,783 ; 
its farms, orchards and gardens produced 



idii^- 



^(^ *f^/'^'> $10,000,000 ; its flocks and herds $5,000,000 ; its coal, iron 
s^v-f"* and other minerals $1,000,000 ; its lumber, salt and similar 

.' ^»=. commodities $1,000,000 ; and its manufactories, in round 

numbers, $5,000,000; a grand total of $36,346,783, or about $160 
^ for every man, woman and child, Centile and Mormon, of its 
populaticjn. as the proceeds of one year's work. \\'here on all (iod"s earth 
can a better showing be made ? 

Utah is the banner-land of thrift and progress. 






48 



UTAH'S GREAT RAILWAY. 



Tiir, CikANi' lIllilI\vA^■ m' Traxkl. 



C'r.' 



\ K" 




L Vi J, ;f I.-''. V 1 v 



•^fw--^ 












:^l]eii God l]ad reared the rLigQsci walls 
'Round Ulali'& verdi vales-. 
Tl]er| rnai] canie ori \\\s niission ajid 

He. laid two sliiri'iiiQ rails. 
O'er wf|ich.in per/ec{ palace car&. 
Hunianity is wl]irled 
A[ sixty iTjiles an l^our {fi^Quo}] 
Ti]i& wonder of ti]e world. 






W-r '■■■'': 



^ST Iron] frozei] Jri^id iT|oui]lairis with 
1^ Tl]eir policslied peaks of sqow. 
•I To fields of waviiig polder) jrair] aiid 

Meadow!ai]ds. below. 
/Tfjrou^l] ^arder]S it] whose preseqce even 

Faradise would pale. 
]{\ &ixty n]ile& ai] l]pur we 
An wl^irled aloi|^ (11^ rail 



••'■2-. -.ji^ 









\ \A\ luiiulrcds of miles of this inagiiirK eiil youiii^ empire, 
opening it up to the knowledge anil admiration of the 
^ outside world, to settlement and development and marvel- 
ous growth, stretches the Rio Cirande Western Railwav ; 
a I'tah line in every stem and branch, switch, rail and 
tic ; a Utah line in every whirr of wheels anil whoop of 
engine, in every interest, effort, purpose and ambition. 
Though it leads everywhere, and is the only route to many wondrous regions, 
it begins and ends in I'tah, e.xcept the one long arm which reaches out to 
clasp hands with its eastern connections at (Irand Junction. It has been a 
potent factor in the advancement of the territory, and has built itself by up- 
buikling Utah. It is one of the engineering miracles of the age. It cuts 
in a thousand i>laces, the rugged backbone of the continent. It traverses 
regions where p.one I)ut a madman, or a genius inspired, would ever have 




dreameil of laying a track for even a circus irick-nuile to travel. Its trains 
spin along where it would seem almost impossible for a mountain goat to 
climb, or anything without wings to pass. Its tracks tlouble and cross 
themselves like the paths of a bird in the air. And yet, so perfect is its 
engineering, so massive and so admirable its construction, and so ceaseless 
the care and supervision of its every detail, that there has never been a 
serious accident on its lines. Its tracks of heavy steel rails, laid in many 
places on a bed of solid granite, are patrolleil day and night by vigilant 
watchmen : every engine is inspected at regular intervals along the way, 
and every car-wheel rigidly tested. So that travel upon it is reail\ safer 
than on the prairie roads of Illinois and Iowa, where accidents do now and 
then occur. Here — never. 

The Rio Grande Western trains are as perfect and as elegant in all their 
appointments as the famous New York Central and Pennsylvania '* Limited." 
Its cars, from smokers to sleepers, are models of beauty and comfort, including 



5-' 




ence of first-class hotels. 



all the iini)roveiiients of the age. Its drawing- 
room and sleeping-cars are massive in build, 
richly decorated with carving and inlaying of 
various-colored woods, gilding and painting, and 
costly mirrors and curtains, and furnished with 
luxurious cushions, marble wash-basins with hot 
and cold water, snowy towels, and every conveni- 
The beds are as clean and comfortable as those 
of any hotel in New York, Philadelphia, or Chicago ; and the wonder- 
weary traveler delightfully dreams over two hundred and fifty miles of crag 
and canyon, cliff, cataract, precipice and desert, without a jar or a jolt. 

The day coaches on all trains are built as strongly and with as much 
attention to artistic effect as the sleepers or parlor-cars. Every car has neat 
and spacious toilet-rooms, with lavatories for men and women, and lounging 
and smoking rooms like those of the sleeping-cars. The mail, express and 
baggage cars are constructed so as to combine the greatest possible strength 
with the highest facilities for the speedy handling of their various freight- 
age. All cars and platforms are brilliantly lighted by gas, which is carried 
in cyliiulers underneath. The locomotives are models of strength and pon- 
derous beauty. Each weighs 130,000 pounds, or double the weight of the 
engines in general use a few years ago, and every detail of the mechanism 
is calculated to secure the greatest attainable power, speed and safety. 
The entire effect is that of a flying train of i:)alaces-on-wheels, where every 
man is a sovereign and every woman is a (jueen — who holds either a first or 
second class ticket. There are no changes of cars between Chicago, Den- 
ver, Salt Lake, Ogden and San Francisco, except for passengers who wish 
to take in the magnificent scenery along the Denver v\: Rio (Irande narrow- 
gauge line. They change at Grand Junction by sini]-)!y ste!:)ping from one 
car to another at the union depot. 

To the traveler on business or for pleasure, going from east to west or west 
to east, the Rio (Irande Western Railway offers the only through line from 
Denver to Salt Lake City that traverses the grand scenery of the Colorado 
mountains and canyons, and gives choice of three famous routes : ]ly the 
Denver <S: Rio Crande standard gauge through the (irand River canyons, 
and by l.eadville, Colorado Springs, Pike's Peak aiul the Mount of the Holy 
Cross , by the Denver \- Rio Grande narrow gauge^ through the Black 
Canyon of the Gunnison, over Marshall Pass, and through the Royal Ciorge 
and the Grand Canyon of the .Vrkansas ; and by the Colorado Midland, by 
Glenwood Springs, Hagerman 'I'unnel, South I'ark, I'te Park, Pike's Peak 
and Manitou 'I'o the freight shipper it offers as short a line and as (|uick 
time as any other road, with choice of seven direct connections at Denver, 
Colorado Springs and Pueblo : the Chicago, Burlington c\: Quincy. the Rock 
Isiaiul, the Atchison, Topeka iV Santa Fe, the Missouri Pacific, Union 

56 



I'aoitk-, Kansas Pacilk-, ami ihc L'liinii I'aciric. I )c'nvcr i\: (iiilf. To anybody 
and everybody, bound from anywhere to anywhere else, to transcontinental 
tourists, as well as t > local shippers and journeyers, the Rio (irande \\'estern 
Railway, controlled and managed by able, progressive and liberal men, who 
stand in the front rank of their profession, offers every inducement and 
accommodation — safe track, superb trains, good service, dainiv eating- 
houses, (juick time, close connections and low rates. It is the business 
man's route between the West and East. It is the artist's and tourist's 
route to all that is sublimest and grandest in scenery on the c(jntinent. It 
is the sportsman's route to mountains and forests that abound with bears, 
cougars or mountain lions, ileer, wolves and other game ; and lakes and 
streams that swarm wiih sjieckled trout. In one region along the line 
Milton Lyon and his partner, old trappers, during the early months of 1891 
killed thirty-five bears, including black, cinnamon and grizzly, and a number 
of cougars, besides all other game ; they brought in eleven bear skins to the 
station in one day. It is the homeseeker's route to millions on millions of 
acres of free farming and grazing lands. It is the stock-raiser's route to 
cattle-ranges and sheep-pastures that cost nothing, where the grass never 
dies, and the horizon is the only fence. It is the fortune-hunter's route to 
ten thousand bonanza mines, present and to come. It is the invalid's route 
to one of God's own sanitariums, where every breath is balm, and health is 
universal as the blessetl air of heaven. 
All aboard for a flying trip along its lines. 




X. 



A WONDERFUL TOUR 



A Flyim; Tkii' ovku iiik Links oi" tiik Rio (jRaxdf 
Westkkx, wnii Gi.iMi'SKs ok Tin: CdUXTRv. 




(iDEN IS tin- starting 
point — and a worthy 
one for such a jaunt — ( )j;clen, 
the picturesque and prosper- 
ous. In the delta of the 
^^'e!)er and Ogden rivers, on a 
lofty bench of the Great Salt Lake, the 
young city sits enthroned like a (jueen 
of the mountains and valleys, liehind 
it rise the majestic Wasatch moiuitains, 
in front <jleam the blue tureen waters of 
the wondrous inland sea, and on cither 
hand as far as the eye can reach stretches the glorious valley with its 
grain-fields and meadows, its orchards and vineyartls, gardens and groves. 
Ogden grew from a population of 6,069, ''^ 1S80, to 14,919, in 1S90, an in- 
crease of 129 per cent., and it has nearly 20,000 in 1S91. Its eighty whole- 
sale houses did $7,181,000 of business in 1890, ami its bank clearings ran 
from $250,000 to $500,000 a week. Its real estate transfers during the year 
reached the amazing aggregate of $9,978,277, or nearly $850,000 a month, 

58 



ami 1,037 biiililiiigs were erected at a cost of $1,769,719- ^^^ factories in- 
creaseil over 50 per cent., aiul the year's product amoir.ited to $1,538,430- 
It has seven banks witli a combined capital of about §1,500,000. Its 
post-olifice handled 4,745,000 letters, and its tele.[,aaph olilices 1,422,696 
messages during 1S90, a record hardly equaled in any other city in the 
world of the same population. Ogden has water works with a capacity 




of 10,000,000 gallons a day. twenty miles of electric street railway, elec- 
tric light, gas works and telephone. It has many costly and handsome 
public and private buildings, fme public schools and private academies, 
inchuling a military institute. The territorial reform school is also located 
here. The whole surrounding country is rich in mines of gold, silver, cop- 
per, lead and iron, and the newly tliscovered bonanzas of La Plata are almost 
at the doors of Ogden. The famous Utah Hot Springs, where many mar- 
velous cures have been effected, are near the city, and a charming bathing 
resort on the Salt Lake beach is in plain view of the court-house. Ogden is 
growing and improving at race-horse speed, and is destined to become one of 

59 



the mosl important cities between tlie Missouri river ami the Pacific coast. 
From its magnificent union depot, surpassintj anything of the kind in Omaha, 
Minneapolis, St. Paul or St. Louis, the superb Rio Orande Western train 
rolls out for Denver and the east. 

.\ rush of eighteen miles, through fields waving with rich harvests and 
orchards bending under their burdens of fruit, thrcjugh Hooper and Layton, 
and it passes Kaysville where two Mormon farmers recently raised a hundred 
and si.\ bushels of wheat to the acre and sold it, measuring that number of 
bushels for every acre they had in cultivation, to the great Zion store in 
Salt Lake City. Four miles further to F'armington, where the spur of track 
runs down to the Lake Park Bathing Beach with its pavilions and piers, bath- 
houses, verandas and promenades, and its e.xtensive salt works ; on past 
Lake Shore Station, where tens of thousands of tons of salt arc made with- 
out cost frcim the wondrous lake waters ; past Wood's Crossing and Hot 
Springs, where a flood of almost boiling waters pours from the side of a 
granite cliff, as full of healing virtues as those of Arkansas or Carlsbad or 
Baden Baden ; on amid meadows of sweet-scented alfalfa and orchards of 
peaches and apricots, nectarines, apples and plums, with the grand Wasatch 
peaks always on the left hand and the azure e.xpanse of the great lake on 
the right ; and, with a shrill " howdye-do " of salutation from the locomotive 
to the spires and minarets of Zion, the train dashes into Salt Lake City, the 
ca|:)ital of LTtah and of Mormondom. 

With engine fresh coaled and watered and wheels all newly nispected, it 
sweeps on between long avenues of shade trees and past charming suburban 
homes embowered in foliage, fruit and flowers, and seven miles out it begins 
to pass the great smelters at F^rancklyn, (lermania and l^ingham Junction 
strung along the track for four miles. They reduce about 75,000 tons of 
sdver ores a year. 

At Bingham Junction, one branch line strikes off to the rich J5ingham 
mines sixteen miles southwest. Another branch, ten miles long, runs to 
Wasatch at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, where all the white 
granite for the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City was quarried. For four 
miles on both sides the canyon is walled with this beautiful stone. F'rom 
Wasatch a tramway leads to Alta where the famous F>mma mine is located. 

The main line tram halts but an instant at Bingham Junction, and speeds 
on up the fertile and beautiful Jordan River Valley, past Draper and Jortlan 
Narrows, and after a run of twenty-one miles whirls into Lehi, a beautiful 
little city of 3,000 i^eople, with all its houses hicklen in the green of trees 
and vines. It takes its name from Lehi, according to The Book of Mormon, 
the ancestor of the American Lulians. The country around it is like a vast 
garden. Within from twenty to forty-five miles are all the mines of Cotton- 
wood, .\merican Fork, Bingham and Tintic. There are a number of flourish- 
ing manufactories, and the Utah Beet Sugar Factory, is the largest concern 

60 




of the kind in the 
I' n i t e d States, 
the phmt costing 
nearly §500,000. 
Near here, where 
the Jordan River flows 
out of Utah Lake, are 
hot springs of great 
curative power. 
On four miles to AnitMican l-'ork, a pn-tty town of 2.500 ])eople, the whole 
place, like everv (►ther in this region, lost in fruit-trees and (lowers. Near 
it. on the shores of beautiful I'tah Lake, is a favorite picnic and camping 
ground. A §20.000 hotel has recently been built. Here start the wagon 
roads to .American l-ork mines, about twenty miles away. Four miles 
further and IJattle Creek is jnissed, anil a further whirl of nine miles l)rings 
I'rovo into view — and a charming view it is. .\ city c)f 5,000 people, on the 
shores of the lovely Utah Lake, with the mighty wall of the Wasatch moun- 
tains as a background. Handsome buildings, all buried in their wealth of 
fruit-trees, flowers and vines. A surrounding country that is a vast garden, 
teeming with every variety of grain, fruit and vegetable. Here is the largest 
woolen mill west of the Missouri River. Its goods are sold in nearly every 

r)2 



stale :uul icirilory of ilie I'nioii : one nf iIk- leacliii)^ business-houses of 
Salt Lake City sells no goods but tiiose made here. The territorial insane 
asylum, which stands on a hi;..jh point in the edge of tiie place, would do 
credit architecturally to any city of any state. lirigham Yoimg Academy, 
just complcteil. is a large and handsome structure. Provo, during 1S90, 
six-nt $560,791 in new buildings. Two daily papers are published in the 
city, and here the Rio (Irantle Western Railway crosses the I'tah Central. 

( )n, with a whirr of Hying wheels, si.\ miles to S|>ringville, where the 
Tinlic Range branch of the Rio (irande NN'estern leaves the main line, and 
pushes through Spanish Fork, a city of 3,500 ])eople in "a lantl llowing 
with milk and honey," where every acre is a garden. The city put nearly 
S6o,ooo in new buiklings in 1S90, has flouring mills, a foundrv, broom- 
fact(jry and artesian wells, and is solidly prosperous in all its industries. 
\'ast deposits of pure alum have been founil here. 

On through Fayson and Coshen, a region rich in all agricultural i)rodur- 
lions. \\'est of (ioshen, the new branch line enters Pifion Canyon, and runs 
for ten miles through as wikl and rugged scenes as can be found in all this 
region of scenic wonders. ihe track through the canyon is a ilizzv puzzle 
in engineering. It winds ami climbs, twists, turns and wriggles, and at last 
absolutely crosses itself backward and forward, tying itself into a loop like 
a double bow-knot. There are but tw<) similar track tangles in the United 
States, one in California and the other in Colorado. Out of this canyon 
labyrinth, the line emerges in the far-famed Tintic mining-camp : ami, just 
on beyond that, will doubtless ere long rush its iron-horse into the newly 
discovered Deep Creek bonanza region, whose richness is 
attracting wide-spread attention now. 

Springville, where this tligression left the main line, is a 
shade-embowered city of 3,500 populaticjn, surrounded l)v a 
region as rich ami productive as the sun shines on. All ^ 

grains, grasses, fruits ami vegetables grow in endless pro- ^; " 

fusion. Streams of limpid water flow through the ,^ 







-.tr-- 



streets. About $30,000 was expended in 1890 in new buildings, and the 
sales of merchandise amounted to nearly §450,000. There are many credit- 
able buildings, public ami private, and a number of flourishing industries, 
including an extensive woolen-mill. 

On four miles, to Vista antl through Pole Canyon ; and, in a few minutes, 
Castilla Springs, with its floods of healing waters, bursting from the inoun- 
tain's side, is reached. There are baths of all sorts and temperatures, and a 
great swimming pool, and any disease that is curable by thermal waters can 
be relieved here. 

-V l)rief run and Thistle junction is reached, where the San Pete \'alley 
branch of the Rio (Irande Western starts toward the vast mines and (juar- 
ries, grainflelds and fruit gardens that lie tt)ward the south, (ilance for a 
moment down this branch line. Two miles from Thistle is Asphaltum 
station, where there is a bed of nearly pure asphaltum, covering a scpiare 
mile, and from eight to fourteen feet thick. Six miles further, and at Xebo 
a view is caught of Mount Xebo, one of the tallest and grandest peaks in 
Utah, snow-capped all the year. About a mile below Xebo the road 
enters the Indian Reservation, ami six miles onward is Indianola, around 
which cluster the adobe houses and tepees of a branch of the great I'te 
tribe, whence Utah has its name. They do a little farming and stock-rais- 
ing, and a good deal of hunting and Ashing, and, all things considered, are 
generally doing well. A\'hirling on through twenty miles of pastures and 
farms, past Hilltop and Milburn, at Fairview a glorious view of the San 
Pete valley, " the granary of I'tah," bursts upon the enchanted eye. The 
whole country for fifty miles is a mingling of field and garden. Onlv two 
miles more, and the train sweeps into Mount Plea.sant, nestled in peach and 
apricot, apple, pear and plum tree.s, all bowed down with their loads of fruit. 
The town stands at the foot of the mountain on a commanding site. It has 
about 3,000 i^opulation, a flouring-mill antl planing mill, and is the seat of 
Wa.satch Academy, a Presbyterian school of some repute I'ive miles in 
twelve minutes, and Spring City is passed, with great masses of snow-crowned 
mountains east and southeast of it ; antl, in ten miles more, Ei^hraim's 
bt)wers of fruit and shatle are entered. In a populatit)n of 2,200, there are 
800 school children, besides all those too young for schooling. .\ new depot, 
new hotel and many other new builtlings tell the story of prosperity. 

.V tlash of six miles onwaril, and Manti is reachetl, with 2,300 pet)ple, and 
hardly a poor man among ihem. IlerL-. at the top of four lofty terraces 
hewn from the mountain sitle. stands the magnificent Mormon temple, which 
has cost $2,500,000, and is t)nly secontl to the t)ne in Salt Lake City. It is 
nearly two hundred feet long, one hundred wide and t)ne hunilretl high, with 
massive towers at each end rising one hundred antl seventv-five feet in the 
air. It is built of snow-while oolite, quarried t)ut of the site on which it 
stands, antl the whole workmanship is exquisite. It can be plainly seen for 

66 



forty miles up and down the valley. A hot sprinj;-, on the edge of the town, 
pours out a hundred cubic feet a minute of water gifted with remarkable 
medicinal (jualities. Just below Manli are the strange " Saleratus Beds,'' 
where for two miles or more the road runs through vast deposits of soda 
pure enough for cooking purposes. It was near Manti that a railroad right- 
of-wav man came across a Mormon .Mr. ( )Ison, who had four wives, all 
named .Vnna. The deeds to the right-of-way had to be signed by the entire 
four Mrs. Anna Olsons. 

The train rushes on througii a continuous succession of grainfields and 
orchards. Sterling, (iunnison and Willow Creek are passed, the Sevier \'al- 
ley is entered, and the locomotive screams its greeting to Salina, the present 
terminus of the branch. Just back of the town are mountains of rock salt, 
much of it as clear as crystal, and absolutely pure. Millions on millions of 
tons of it can be blasted out as cheap as dirt. About a mile south of these 
mountainous monuments to the memory of Lot's wile is a mountain of 
almost pure gypsum, and there is kaolin enough to furnish all the potteries 
and candy-makers of the world. The whole region abounds with game and 
fish. 

From Salina, a stage-ride, that condenses in a few hours grandeur ana 
variety and novelty enough to glorify all the memories of the most monot- 
onous and commonplace life, takes one into the great canyons of the Colo- 
rado, where (iod Almighty Himself seems to have fmished His labors in scenic 
magnificence, feeling that there was nothing more for even Omnipotence to 
do for the delight of human eye and soul. In Marble Canyon, the walls of 
solid marble, beautiful as ever sculptor's chisel wrought into an immortality 
of genius, tower thousands on thousands of feet heavenward on either hand ; 
and along the Vermillion Cliffs, the rainbow itself fades, by contrast with the 
myriads of dazzling tints and hues, into a colorless arch of shamefaced fog. 

The San Pete Valley which begins about thirty miles norlh of Manti, 
extends for fifty miles southward, an unbroken vision of fertility ami beauty. 
Six miles north of Salina it merges into the glorious valley of the Sevier, 
which runs forty miles south to the mouth of Clear Creek Canyon, 
leading to the new and much-talked-of Marysvale mines. Below Marysvale 
begins another valley of wonderful wealth, that extends to the cotton and 
semi-tropical fruit lands of Southern Utah. Is the Rio (irande Western 
going to push its long arms of iron and steel into these new empires of rich 
fruitage and freightage? It would be safe to lay wagers upon it. 

lUit back to Thistle, to resume the interrupted main line jaunt. Thistle 
has immense ipiantities of fine building stone. On, amid crags and canyons ; 
through Red Narrows, Mill Fork and Clear Creek ; past Soldier Summit, 
where one of Albert Sidney Johnston's soldiers in the " Mormon War " lies 
buried nearly 10,000 feet above the level of the sea. Near Soldier Summit, 
ozokerite or mineral wax is found. Seven miles further, and Pleasant \'alley 

68 



Jiinclio!! is reached, whence a branch road, eighteen miles in length, leads 
to the I'leasant \'alley coal-mines, where hundreds of thousands of tons of 
black diamonds are annually mined. At Hale's station on the coal branch, 
nine miles from the Junction, the Rio Grande ^^'estern company cuts all 
its supplies of ice on Fish creek, a stream clear as crystal and swarming 
with trout. 

I'Vom Pleasant \'alley Junction to Kyune on the main line is six miles, and 
the whole distance is through mountains of the finest quality of gray sand- 
stone, which several strong companies are quarrying and shipping. The 
name of Kyune originatetl with a shiftless fellow who, in hunting, some 
years ago, came across " a strange varmint " where the station now stands. 
He described it as a "kind of a ky-une lookin' critter," meaning a sort of 
cross between a coyote and a coon — and the name stuck. On, nine miles 
through the glorious canyon of Price river, where every turn of the track 
reveals scenes but little less grand and picturesque than those of the Grand 
Canyon of the Arkansas. Precipices of stone, thousands of feet high, carved 
and twisted, by ages of floods and storms, into all weird and fantastic shapes 
that the maddest imagination can conceive ; castles, cathedrals, fortresses, 
towers and spires, animals, birds and reptiles, all on a scale so colossal that 
the mightiest structures of men are dwarfed, by contrast — for comparison 
there is none — to sick children's Noah's Arks, with elephants an inch high 
and giraffes scarcely larger than full-grown Jersey mosquitoes. The flying 
train passes out of the canyon at Castle Gate, where two gigantic pillars of 
stone, towering nearly to the clouds, form a gateway that has been pictured 
by artists and daubers throughout the world. Here are the great Castle 
Gate coal-mines and coking-works, which have already been mentioned. 
Three miles eastward is Helper station, where a " helper " engine is attached 
to trains coming west to help them over the steep grades of Price Canyon. 
Seven miles onward to Price Station, where Price river is 
crossed. It is the shipping point for all the country 
within a hundred and fifiv miles of the road on the 







north, including two Indian Reservations and a military post. Fort Thorn- 
burg ; and for a region extending for fifty miles south of the town. It 
handles a great deal of live stock, and ships the asphaltum of the Fort 
Duchesne company. It is the starting point of daily stage lines to many 
places north and south of the railroad, and boasts of a lively newspaper 
as one of its pet institutions. On through Huntington and Farnham, 
a twelve-mile-long strip of green fertility about two miles wide, walled in 
by desert. Wherever water touches the soil, trees, rich harvest-fields, 
meadows of alfalfa, grass waist-high to the cattle, fruit and flowers. Sunny- 
side is a narrow oasis. At Cedar the whole desert as far as the eye can 
reach is dotted with straggling clumps of Spanish cedar or mountain ma- 
hogany, which grows in some mysterious way where even sagebrush gives 
up disheartened. " Grassy," seven miles further east, seems to take its 
name from the fact that there is not a blade of grass within a mile of it. 
Lower Crossing of Price river is a stock-shipping point. About twenty- 
five miles away in the wild Book Mountains begins the Range Valley, 
eighty miles long by fifteen wide, wonderfully fertile and watered by moun- 
tain streams, but absolutely inaccessible except by a hazardous mule or burro 
trail. It is used by the Range Valley Cattle Company as a ranch, said to be 
the most extensive in Utah. The whole region abounds with bear, deer, 
mountain lions or cougars, lynxes, wolves and other game, and all the streams 
swarm with speckled trout. Six miles further east is Green River Station, 
one of the prettiest spots on the whole line, an oasis of verdure and bloom 
in a wide-spreading desert. It is just west of the long bridge over Green 
river. The Rio Grande Western has an elegant hotel here, called the Palmer 
House, in honor of the president of the company. It is surrounded by green 
lawns, shade-trees, gardens and fruit. Fountains play in a charming little 
park in front of the house, although every drop of w^ater has to be piped 
and pumped from the river. The house is admirably kept, and its table is 
not surpassed at any railroad station in the country. 

Eight miles east of Green River, " Solitude " is well named. On through 
nineteen miles of desert, the only semblance of green is an occasional ]iatch 
of dwarfed and brownish sage-brush. It is so bare and barren that it would 
seem as though the very ravens that solemnly stalk around amid its desola- 
tion w'ould have to carry their own canteens and haversacks, as Phil. Sheri- 
dan said the crows would have to do in the Shenandoah \'alley. .\nd yet 
there is a wondrous fascination about it. There is a suggestion of the Great 
Sahara. Lew Wallace's marvelous description of the de.sert in "Ben Hur" 
rises before the eye of memory. And then this American desert is walled 
in on both sides by such weirdly, wondrously fantastic mountains that it is 
always interesting to the point of fascination. In some places the cliffs that 
border it are first low, bare mounds; then higher ranges level along the top; 
then mighty precipices striped horizontally with white, yellow, dark-red and 



l)iir|)lc strata, tlic layers as rcj^iilar as ihuiigli pamted, aiul tlic vast masses 
cut by deep canyons into millions of strange shapes. Near Lower Crossing, 
off to the eastward, there is a figure of an elephant five hundred feet long 
lying ilown, with feet, legs, ears anil trunk as perfect as though hewn by 
Titanic sculptors. In the same region, on a terraced foundation a thousand 
feet high, there is a vast temple a half mile long and five hundred feet high, 
with a mighty dome in the centre rising two hundred feet higher ; while 
away off, ten or fifteen miles west, there is a far larger structure, double 
domed, one dome being pyramidal and the other conical. Between Crescent 
and 'I'hompson's, away off to the west or southwest, looms up a great city 
of red sandstone on top of a lofty mountain. Huildings, chimneys, towers 
and spires are all so perfect that it is almost impo.ssible to believe that the 
genii or the fairies have not reared a real city as large at least as Chicago 
in this wild realm of fantasy. Twenty-five miles away, on the t(jp of a lofty 
mountain range, stands an exact counterpart of the Capitol at Washington 
that must be a mile in length and from five hundred to a thousand feet in 
height to show as it does at so great a distance. 

Thompson's Springs, twenty-seven miles east of (Ireen River, is another 
oasis of trees and grass, grain and fiowers. The water is piped four miles 
from a spring in the canyon. The place is a shipping-point for cattle from 
the distant ranches. There is abunilance of coal and asphaltum in the 
neighborhood, but neither has ever been worked. On through the moun- 
tain-walled desert, past Sager's and Whitehouse and Cisco ; and Agate is 
reached, where thousands of acres are covered with beautiful water-agates 
and carnelians. Cottonwood is passed, and at \\'estwater the train plunges 
into one of the wildest and grandest canyons on the line. For fifteen miles 
of wonder Nature seems to have cut her weirdest capers. Between West- 
water and Utaline, across Grand River, along the dizzy brink of which the 
train is flying, is a vast cavern in a blood-red cliff. It seems a fit temple for 
the mighty gods and other ciueeriosities, whose giant effigies, carved in 
granite and red sandstone, stand in solemn, silent array along a thousand 
strange cliffs and mountain-tops. Near Utaline, where the Rio Crande 
Western, for the only time in all its wanderings, crosses the boundary-line 
of Utah, and enters Colorado, off far to the southward, through a break in 
the wall of mountains, another range appears, crowned with a hundred or 
more gigantic copies of the Great Pyramid of Ghizeh, magnified a score of 
times, .\cross the river near Ruby, on the point of a mountain sits a huge 
Arab, with a dark-stained red sandstone face, and a white stone turban and 
burnous ; while behind him stands a perfect drometlary two hundred feet 
high, with stony eyes aj^parently fi.xed upon his mightv master. Not more 
than a mile away a procession of gigantic Egyptian priests, robed and gai- 
landed. are marching down the precipice, the smallest of them a hundred 
feet tail. Past Ruby, and the canyon opens out into desert again, bounded 



^' 



^ 



Nt-r 



..Jp near \\\e mountains cragoy crest "*'^^" 

i Tr\e mishly rnpsuls s[rong and proud- ■^'■ 

^ tinTo7n^^.f'. ^."'^'^5 |a,nst ?he,r breast 
•V.in pointed pilots pierce the cloud 

ni5h mountains -seeming little hills - 

-rnboss the spreading plain below ' <fM 

MHd rivers look like laughino nib ' ■ • 

As down the distant vale Ihey /low. * ^*^' 

■■'^re in a wierd cold wintry orave 
Wrapped iq a marble shroud oj snow 
With not a ripple not a wave 
Cajmly sleeps Loch Ivanhoe. 
sut with the coming of the spnno 
The liUie flowers will bud and blow 
And 5!adsome songs lf]e birds will si-- 
Alorjg ;h]e banks o/ Ivanhoe. 






<;':,^ 



on both sides slill l)y Uic niuiiiilains swariniii;^ with weird, lantastic shapes. 
The train flies on i)ast Crevasse ; and Fruita, uliere water's magical touch 
has transformed the desert into a garden of llowers and fruit, and made the 
station a great shipping-point of peaches, apricots, a))ples, ])ears and melons. 
Roan is left behind, and in a few minutes more (irand Junction is reached. 
It is a city of aliout 4,000 jieople, tastefully laid out and well built. It has 
electric ligiit, Holly water-works, street-cars, good schools, churches of all the 
leading denominations, and daily papers chuck-full of boom sjjirit. Just 
back of the city, the whole face of the mountains assumes the exact shape of 
vast white-stone curtains, a thousand feet long, fluted and plaited, and sur- 
mounted by quaintly carved lambrequins of red sandstone fifty or a hundred 
feet high, (irand Junction, as its name denotes, is a junctional point of 
both rivers and railroads. Here the Grand and the Gunnison rivers unite ; 
and here the east-bound journeyer has choice of three routes, all abounding 
in magnificent scenery, world-famous mines of gold and silver, glorious 
health and pleasure resorts, and unsurpassed hunting and fishing ; and all 
superbly equipped, and furnishing every comfort, convenience and lu.xury, 
that the highest perfection of railroading can suggest. 

1. The Denver & Rio (irande standard-gauge line whirls him through 
all the wild glories of the Grand River Canyons ; and past the famous Rock 
Creek, Red Cliff and Belden mines, which in rugged picturesqueness surpass 
the dizziest habitations of Alpine cliff-ilwellers. It takes him through Lead- 
ville, one of the mining wonders of the ages ; a camp 12,000 feet above the 
low level of the sea, that in ten years produced nearly $160,000,000 in gold, 
silver, copper and lead ; antl that turned out §13,684,000 in 1889. It spins 
him through the Grand Canyon of the Arkansas and the Royal Gorge, that 
all human language has been bankrupted trying to describe ; past Colorado 
Springs, where a beautiful young city of 12,000 people has risen, like a 
magic exhalation, in a day, around wondrous fountains of healing ; under 
the shadows of Pike's Peak, with its crown of everlasting snow, and its 
marvelous cogwheel railroad, a trip over which is worthy of a century's 
remembrance ; and into Denver, the proud " Queen City of the Rocky 
Mountains," whose history lays all romance flat upon its back, and makes 
the most gorgeous tales of genii and fairies seem commonplace and tame. 

2. Or, from Grand Junction, the traveler can take the far-famed Den- 
ver iV- Rio Grande narrow-gauge line, which condenses in a four-hundred- 
and-twenty-five mile run grand and varied scenery enough to have rendered 
the world picturesque, if God Almighty had made it everywhere else a 
desert plain. The savage grandeur and beauty of the Black Canyon of the 
Gunnison ; of Marshall Pass, where the road winds sixty-five miles to travel 
thirteen, aiul where one can look back over eight tracks, all at different 
heights ; of the Grand Canyon of the .\rkansas and the Royal Gorge, defy 
all genius of tongue or pen, brush or pencil to depict them. 

75 



3- Last, but far fruin least in interest or importance, the Colorado Mid- 
land, with a superb track, and trains perfect in every detail, will send the 
eastward-journeying pilgrim Hying from Orand Junction, past (ilenwood 
'* *-^ -Springs, with its glorious fountains and baths; through Red 
■ '■^^'^ Rock Canyon ; past the majestic Seven Castles; through 

Hell date, with its labyrinth of savage grotesqueries ; 
past exquisite Loch Ivanhoe, a liquid jewel on 
-iv^. the rocky bosom of giant ruggedness ; and 
through Hagerman Tunnel, 11,528 feet, or 
more than two miles above the level of the 
sea, leaving great masses of snowy clouds 
far below. The train speeds on through 
Leadville and Buena Vista ; winds around 
Ciold Hill, where Hierstadt sketched his 
great picture, "The Heart of the Rocky 
Mountains ; " dashes through South Park, 
(iranite Canyon and Summit Park ; past 
picturesque and beautiful (ireen Mountain 
Falls, a fashionable summer sauntering- 
place ; around the foot of Pike's Peak ; 
past the Garden of the Cods ; through 
Manitou, with its famous springs antl cav- 
erns, its half-hundred hotels and its swarms 
of summer guests from every region of the 
* globe; through Colorado Springs; and into Denver — 
A^ "^ into whose royal borders, as into those of Imperial Rome, "all 
roads lead" — in the Rocky Mountain Realms. 

It is a trip to be remembered with profit antl delight as long as life and 
memory last, even though one should live to discount Methuselah as a 
kitten. It is an unbroken eight-hundred-mile-long panorama of all that is 
grandest and weirdest, most sublime and beautiful in Nature's handiwork ; 
Jehovah's artistic masterpieces on the most stupendous scale. Mountains, 
whose heads are crowned with the snows of untold ages, while their feet are 
lost in the verdure and bloom of everlasting summer gardens. Rocks, 
thousands on thousands of feet high, and of every tint antl hue, from white 
and black and brown to pink and blue, golden, orange and blood-red, 
carved and chiseled by tiie omnipotent fingers of whirlpools and eddies and 
rushing floods into gigantic sculptures that dwarf ail the sphyn.xes and pyra- 
mids, obelisks, arches, domes and towers of men to puny babies' j^laythings. 
Mighty rivers, as large as the upper Mississippi or Ohio, tumbling and j)lung- 
ing and kicking up their liquid heels like the maddest and giddiest trout 
brooks. Peaks, whose crests are wreathed with snowy clouds ; and canyons, 
whose fathomless, yawning glooms lav an unwonted spell of decent silence 

76 




on even the niosl llippviiu average laslnonable tourist gazer. Cataracts and 
cascades, whose wild, leapnig waters are churned and dashed into foam and 
spray and feathery mist long before they strike the stony basins dizzv depths 
below ; while myriads of irises and rainbows dance in every gorge where a 
straggling sunbeam fmds its lucent way. And deserts weird and de.'^olate as 
the Great Sahara, looking as though the ocean had been swept by a million 
cyclones and whirlwinds, and in the midst of the awful commotion had 
suddenly petrified in eternal loneliness of alkali and sand. 

All the boasted mountain scenery, from the New Hampshire "Notch " to 
far-famed *' Lookout," where tire historic " Hattle above the Clouds" never 
took place, would l(«>k like ant-hills and pig-troughs in any hundred miles of 
the I'tah and Colorado Rockies — the only Real ^^'onderland, with the 
" R. W." blown in the glass, of the I'nited-Statian part of the new world. 
Compared with a thousand places along the Rio Grande Western route, all 
such inuch-aelvtrtised scenes as the Horseshoe Curve, the Bridge across the 
Potomac at Harper's Ferry, the New River Rapids ami the Hawk's Nest, 
and the would-be wildest little .Adirondack crags and glens and gullies, 
grow lame as tennis courts or crocpiet grounds. All the rocks and ripples, 
cliffs and gulches of the 20,000-annual-visitored Dells of the Wisconsin 
could be lost beyond the power of the keenest-eyed buzzard that wears 
feathers to lind them in this land of \ast Picturescjues. The whole .\lle- 
ghany and ]!lue Ridge systems of mountains wouUI look like a prairie-dog 
town anywhere among the glacier-capped Sierras 01 Utah and Colorado. 
The Alps themselves would dwindle by contrast, l-'or miles at a stretch 
every foot of the railroad track had to be blasted from the solid granite face 
of precipices that touch the clouds, aK)ng the dizzifying margin of savage 
torrents that have raged and roared and foamed for ages in vain attempts 
to cleave for themselves a broader pathway to the far-off seas. The Rio 
Grande \\ estern trains are often wrappeil in clouils, and sometimes fly along 
for miles above the tleecy flounces of the skies ; but the track, like the house 
of the scriptural wi.se man. is "builded on a rock," and // is abso/itkly safe. 
It never hail an accident, am! with its perfect system of track and car and 
engine inspection, it probably never will. It is The Grand Safe and Sceinc 
Route of the World. 



:iV. 




78 



xr. 



GREAT SALT LAKE 



'i'ln: Dkai) Ska oi A.mkkka- — A \\'aii.u\ Ma(. a/ink ok 
Infinite Ru iiks — I.\( (»mi'arai;i.i; Ska BATiiiN(;. 




HI', .M( )SI' woiulcTlul ffaliiic of all this wonderlaiui 
tour, llu' nii^hliest marvel of all-marvelous Utah, 
an ocean of majestic mystery clail in beaiitv divine, 
is (ireat Salt Lake, the American Dead Sea. 
Among all earth's weiril wonders in water it has 
but one rival or peer — the miracle-made sea whose 
waves of doom and oblivion roll over Sodom and 
Gomorrah, the Chicagos of forty centuries ago. Think of a lake from 
twenty-five hundred to three thousand square miles in area, Iving a tliou- 
sand miles inland, at an altitude of four thousand, two hundreil and fifty 
feet ai)ove the sea level, wlu)sc waters are six limes as salt as those of the 
ocean ; and, while it has no outlet, four large rivers pouring their ceaseless 
floods of fresh water into it witliout raising its mysterious surface a frai- 
tion of an inch, or ever diminishing, so far as chemical analysis can deter- 
mine, its indescribable saltiness. Where does all the water go? \\here 
does all the salt, that no streams can freshen, come from ' \\'iuTe are the 
vast saline magazines from which it draws its everlasting sup|)lies ? ( )ne 
may stand upon its shores and ask a thousand such questions but no 
answer comes from its mysterious depths, in which nothing lives but death 
and silence. 

\\'hen, m February, 1S46, twenty thousand .Mormons, uiuler the leadership 
of I5righam \'oung, started from Nauvoo, Illinois, on their two-tlu)Usanil-mile 
pilgrimage through the trackless wilderness of the American West, they j^ro- 
claimed themselves the moikrn Israel in search of the promised land. It 
was a strange fate, or destiny, or Providence, that leil them to a region so 
similar to the " Land of Tromise " of Israel of old. There, the lake of Gen- 
nesaret, or sea of Galilee, was fresh water and full of fish. The Jordan 
River flowed out of it and emptied into the I )eail Sea, which is so salt and 



79 



acrid that no living thing is found in its waters. Here, Provo or Utah Lake 
is fresh and sweet, and its limpid waters swarm with speckled trout and other 
fish as savory as any that strained the nets of Peter, James and John. Out 
of it flows the Mormon River Jordan, and after rambling for forty or fifty 
miles through orchards and meadows, grain fields and gardens, pours its sil- 
very tide into Great Salt Lake, the saltiest body of water on the globe, sur- 
l)assing even its Judean counterpart by one and a half per cent. In the Holy 
Land the Jordan flows from north to south, while the Utaii Jordan flows 
from south to north. Mount Nebo stood like a giant sentinel overlooking 
the ancient "land fl(nving with milk and honey," and here Mount Nebo, lift- 
ing its crown of eternal snow twelve thousand feet heavenward, stands guard 
forever over a fairer Canaan than Moses viewed, but never entered. 

Salt Lake was once as large as Lake Huron, and was over a thousand 
feet deep. Its former benches and the marks of its olden wave-plashings 
are as plain upon the mountain-benches as though traced but yesterday. It 
is now about a hundred miles long, with an average width of from twenty- 
five to thirty miles. It is from fifty to si.xty miles wide in some places, and 
its greatest depth is about si.xty feet. Its waters contain eighteen per cent, 
of solid matter, mostly salt and soda, with small proportions of sulphur, 
magnesia, calcium, chlorine, bromine, potassium, lithia and boracic acid. 
The Asiatic Dead Sea water contains twenty-three per cent, of solids, includ- 
ing less salt and soda and much more magnesia, calcium and potassium than 
Salt Lake. Atlantic Ocean water holds but 3.5 per cent, of solid material, 
of which salt constitutes 2.6 per cent. Hundreds of thousands of tons of 
salt are made by natural evaporation along the shores of the lake, and at 
one place near Salt Lake City a windy night never fails to pile up many 
tons of soda, eliminated by the movement of the waves. 

Compared with this vast li(|uicl treasure-house of riches, the greatest 
bonanza mines of Utah or of tiie I nited States dwindle to blind beggars' 
penny boxes. Take out your pencil and do a little figuring. Figures, it is 
said, will not lie, anil you will soon fintl yourself standing dumfounded 
before your own mathematical truths. 

Say Salt Lake is a hundred miles long, and has an average width of 27 
miles ; that gives an area of 2,700 square miles. There are 27,878,400 
square feet in a mile ; so the lake has an area of 75,271,680,000 square feet. 
Take 20 feet as its average depth ; then 20 times 75,271,680,000 will give 
us 1,505,433,600,000 cubic feet as the contents of the lake. Now 16^3 
per cent., or one-sixth of this, according to the analysis of eminent chemists, 
is salt and sulphate of soda. 

That is, the lake contains 250,905,600,000 cubic feet of salt and sulphate 
of soila. Of this vast mass one eighth is suli)hate of soda and seven-eights 
common salt. So there are of Na 2 S. O. 4, or sulphate of soda, 31.363,200,- 
000 cubic feet ; anil of Na CI., or common salt, 219,542,400,000 cubic feet. 

So 




These I'l 1^11 res seei 
hardly a bej^ini 
A cubic foot of SI 
and a cubic fool 
have, as the cont 
wealth, 1,568,160,000,000 pounds. 



astounding, but they are 

iVoceed a little farther. 

soda weiijhs 50 pounds, 

salt. So pounds ; so we 

unparalleled reservoir of 

or 7<S4,o8o,ccc tonsof sulphateof soda; 



and 17,560.330,200,000 pounds, or 8,780,169,600 tons of salt. .Allowing ten 
tons to a car-load, that would be 78408,000 cars of soda, and 878,016,960 
cars of salt. Taking 30 feet as the total length of a frei;.4ht car and its 
couplings, we woukl have a train of soda 445.500 miles long, or nearly to 
the moon and back ; and a train i)\ salt, 4,988,730 miles in length, or long 
enough to reach 196 times around the earth, anil leave an 8,oco mile string 
of cars over on a side track. Running 20 miles an hour and never sto]iping 
night or day, it would take the salt-laden train 28 years, 5 months and 23 
days to pass a station. 

When figures mount, as these do, into billions and trillions they become 
too vast for any careless handling. These are, thus far, correct and reason- 
able, though almost incomprehensible. Carrv the comiiutation one step 

82 



more. 'I'lic (uiliiuuv valiialion of sulplialc of soda is one cent a pound, or 
§20 a Ion ; so our 784,080,000 tons of it would be worth, in the markets of 
the world, §15,681.600,000. Common salt at a low estimate, is worth a half 
cent, a pouml, or $10 a ton ; our 8. 780,169, 600 tons of it would consequently 
have a money value of $87,801,696,000. That is a gij^antic, almost incon- 
ceivable total for salt ami soda, of §103,48^5.296,000 ; or enough, in two in- 
5;redients of this walerv wonik-r of the new world, to pav all the national 
debts in C'hristendom, and leave a prelly fair fortune for every man, woman, 
child and other jjcrson in the hemispheric republic of Vankeedoodledoo. 

The (.iitire assessed valuation of the I'nited States, including real estate 
and personal property, under the census of 1880, was $16,902,993,543 ; .so 
the salt and soda of this c)ne nK)untain-girt lake are worth more than six 
times as much as tiie \vliole forty-nine states ami territories of the Union, as 
shown by the national assessment books ten years ago. Do these figures 
seem astounding? 'i'lie facts are astounding, and the figures but do them 
justice. The conclusions are inexorable, and the figures, though over- 
whelming, are absolutely accurate ami trustworthy. lUit cut all the figures 
ill two, halve all llu- estimates, and we would still have a sum so prodigious, 
that all the arithmetic classes of creation would stagger before it. 

Salt Lake is as entrancing in its beauty, as it is amazing in its material 
riches. On all our glorious earth, of which Taradise was once a part, no 
more picturesque and beautiful body of water Hashes back from its mirror- 
like bt)som the dazzling ratliance of the sunlight. Xo lovelier lake ripples 
its melodious love .song to the gently wooing breeze ; and no grander inland 
sea thunders its billowy fury tt) the shores. The snow-capped Wasatch 
mountains wall it in on the east and southeast ; the giant Oquirrhs bathe 
their feet in its southern margin ; the great salt desert, in which Bonneville's 
exploring expedition came near perishing of thirst ami starvation, in 1S33, 
stretches bare and desolate from its western shore, and the wild I'romontorv 
Range plunges boldly into its waves for thirty miles on the north. Uetween 
the Wasatch mountains and its eastern beach, lies the garden-like vallev, 
while fifteen miles away, on one of its ancient shelving beaches, Salt Lake Citv. 
with domes and towers half-hidden in semi-tropical foliage, nestles at the feet 
of the glacier-crested mountain giants ; and a hundred miles to the southward 
rises the snowy summit of Nebo to lend a far-off gramleur to the scene. 

The tinting of the water reinimls one of the iridescent glories of the 
South Caribbean Sea. Near the shores it is an exquisite opaline green, 
delicate and wavering. 1-arther out, this changes into a blue as dazzling as 
that of the sapphire skies that beml lovingly above it ; and this graduallv 
deepens into royal purple, whiih darkens ami lightens at every touch of the 
dallying breeze, and every llitting of the golden, lleece-like clouds that tleck 
the lustrous azure of the heavens. The sunsets are insurpassable in glory 
in all the grand chariot-course of I'hoebus and his llaming steeds. Nature 

•^3 




V/i|l] awe 1 walch[ th.s sun Qo dowq 
Across t^ie ^reat Sail Lake, 
T]]e TTiounlains don \\\2u ^older^ crowp. 
Tlie soanri5 seagulls circle Tour]d, 
Tl^e ^eiitle billows break. 

And wl^er] I scar| wl7al'5 rqade for iran, 
To rr^ake iiis l^Gail _grow ^lad. 

Wifl] wonderrrieril niy [jearl 1 l^U5l^; 

1 feet tl^e [lusl^ o/ sliarrie's l^ot blu&l], 
Because rriy scul is sad. 



L_ 



seems to empty all her gorgeous paiiU-|)ots on the evening sky, and the clay 
(lies, like a vast aerial dolphin, in a conllagration of prismatic splendors. 

The whole lake is dotted with magnificently picturesijiie mountainous 
islands or islandous mountains, rising out of the blue-green water to a height 
of from three to five thousand feet. The principal of these wave-washed 
mountain l)eauty-si)ots are .Vntelope, Stansbury, Fremont, Carrington, (lun- 
nison, Dolphin, Mud, Kgg and Hat islands. Antelope Ishuul. the largest of 
them all, is si.xteen miles long and five miles wide, and lies in plain view of 
Salt l>ake City. It towers to an altitutle of about four thousand feet above 
the surface of the lake, antl abounds in e.\(iuisite scenery. Streams of pure, 
sweet water tumble tlown its mountain-sides and canyons ; rich grasses 
flourish everywhere, and it is beautified by groves of trees, thrifty ranches, 
orchards and gardens. Vast deposits of slate of iridescent hues are found 
upon it. It has a glorious, gently-sloping beach of snowy sand, and will, 
beyond all question, some day be the great fashionable bathing-place of 
interior North America. From present indications it will not be long until 
every available site for a bathing-ground on the eastern shore of the lake 
will be appropriated and improved. In 1S89, there were 240,000 bathers at 
the four principal resorts, and over 300,000 in 1890, and among them were 
tourists from every region of the globe. Antelope Island is an ideal spot for 
a grand national summer assembly-place ; and it seems hardly probable that 
the enterprising managers of the Rio Grande Western Railway will allow it to 
lie much longer unimproved. With proper buildings and accommodations, 
hundreds of thousands of visitors could be annually taken to enjoy the 
bathing and boating and other aquatic sports and diversions in the most 
interesting and enchanting region for such jnirposes on all the continent — 
if not in all the world. 

It may seem preposterous to talk of the finest sea bathing on earth a 
thousand miles from the ocean ; but truth is no less truth because it appears 
absurd. The sea bathing in Great Salt Lake infinitely surpasses anything 
of the kind on either the Atlantic or Pacific coasts. The water contains 
many times more salt and much more soda, sulphur, magnesia, chlorine, 
bromine and potassium than any ocean water on the globe. It is powerful 
in metlicinal virtues, curing or benefiting many forms of rheumatism, rheu- 
matic gout, dyspepsia, nervous disorders and cutaneous diseases ; and it acts 
like magic on the hair of those unfortunates whose tendencies are to bald- 
headedness. It is a prompt and potent tonic and invigorant of body and 
mind, and then there is no end of fun in getting acquainted with its pecu- 
liarities. A first bath in it is always as good as a circus, the bather being 
his or her own amusing trick mule. 'I'he specific gravity is but a trifle less 
than that of the Holy Land Dead Sea, the actual figures with distilU-il water 
as unity being, for the ocean 1.027, ''"" ^^I't Lake 1.107, and for the Dead 
Sea I.I 16. The human body will not and can not sink in it. Vou can walk 

85 



out in it where it is lit'iy feet deep, and your body will stick up out of it like 
a fishing cork from the shoulders upward. Vou can sit down in it perfectly 
secure where it is fathoms deep. Men lie on top of it with their arms 
crossed under their heads and smoke their cigars. Its buoyancy is inde- 
scribable and unimaginable. Any one can float upon it at the first trial ; there 
is nothing to do but lie down gently upon it — and fl(jat. But swimming is an 
entirely different matter. The moment you begin to "paddle your own 
canoe" lively and — t(j the lookers-on — mirth-provoking exercises ensue. 
When you stick your hands under to make a stroke your feet decline to stay 
anywhere but on top ; and when, after an exciting tussle with your refractory 
pedal extremities, you again get them beneath the surface, your hands fly out 
with the splash and splutter of a half-dozen flutter wheels. If, on account of 
your brains being heavier than your heels, you chance to turn a somerset 
and your head goes under, your heels will pop up like a pair of frisky didapper 
ducks. You can not keep more than one end of yourself under water at 
once, but you soon learn how to wrestle with its novelties and then it 
becomes "a thing of beauty" and a joy for any summer day. The water is 
delightful to the skin, every sensation is exhilarating, and one can not help 
feeling in it like a gilded cork adrift in a jewel-rimmed bowl of champagne 
punch. In the sense of luxurious ease with which it envelops the bather it 
is unrivaled on earth. The only approximation to it is in the phosphores- 
cent waters of the Mosquito Indian coast. Tlie water does not freeze until 
the thermometric mercury tumbles down to eighteen degrees above zero, or 
fourteen below the ordinary freezing point. It is as clear as crystal, with a 
bottom of snow-white sand, and small objects can be distinctly seen at a 
depth of twenty feet. There is not a fish or any other living thing in all 
the twenty-five hundred or three thousand square miles of beautiful and 
mysterious waters, except the yearly increasing swarms of summer bathers. 
Not a shark or a stingaree to scare the timid swimmer or floater, not a crab 
or a crawfish to nip the toe of the nervous wader, not a minnow or a frog, a 
tadpole or a pollywog — nothing that lives, moves, swims, crawls or wiggles. 
It is the ideal sea-bathing jilace of the world. 




86 



XII 



SALT LAKE CITY 



The Ixtkr-Mduntai.n Metropolis — A Crrv of Great 
Beauty and Infinite Possibilities. 




IFTEEN miles from the southeastern shore of this inland 
>ea of Wonders, embowered in shade and shubbery, and recall- 
ing glorious pictures of the Orient, is Salt Lake City, the capi- 
tal and metropolis of Utah, the sacred Zion of the Latter Day 
Saints, the royal city of the Mormon kingdom and hierarchy. 
In situation and surroundings it is incomparably the most 
picturesque and beautiful city in the L^nited States. It sits 
enthroned, like a queen of the mountains and valleys, upon an ancient 
beach of the great lake, about a hundred feet above the present level 
of its waters, and 4,350 feet above the sea. On the east the giant 
Wasatch mountains, with their crowns of everlasting snow, towering from 
si.x to eight thousand feet above it, form a background unsurpassed in 
grandeur. To the west and northwest, gleaming and glistening like a 
mighty mirror in the sunshine, which is undimmed three hundred and fifteen 
days of every year, lies the American Dead Sea, with the Oquirrh moun- 
tains dabbling their golden feet in its southern brim. Northward and 
southwartl as far as the eye can reach stretches the Kdenlike valley, in 
an unliroken vista of fields anil meadows, orchards, vineyards, pastures and 
gardens — a boundless glory of trees, foliage, fruits and flowers; through 
which the Jordan, like a silver thread, winds its way to lose itself in 
the unfathomed mystery of a lake that has many inlets but no outlet. 

The city was originally settled by the Mormons under Brigham Voung, 
in July, 1.S47, and it abounds in monuments and mementoes of the.se strange 
people. They laid out the original city in squares, si.x hundred and sixty- 
six and two-thirds feet in length ; each square containing ten acres. The 
streets are a hundred and thirty-two feet wide, ant! every street is shaded 
by grand old long-armed trees, many of them fruit antl flower-bearing 
Along both sides of every street flow streams of sparkling mountain water. 

87 



Kvery lunisc in the city is siirrouiulccl by green lawns, gardens anil orchards, 
so that one looks in vain for a poor man's home. The humblest adobe 
cottage, half hidden in trees, frnit and flowers, becomes a thing of beauty. 
In fact, the emblem of Mormonism was a Bee Hive, and every man, 
woman antl chikl had to work at something. Everybody was a jiro- 
ducer. No drones were tolerated, and there were no loafers, tramps or 
beggars. The whole city was abloom with industry and thrift. 

Dnly within the last three or four years has the spirit of modern (leiuile 
progress struck this (juaintest, most beautiful and most interesting of North 
American cities. Its population rose from 20,678 in 1880, to 46,259 in 1890, 
and it is now between 50,000 and 55,000. The assessed value of property 
si)rang from $16,611,752 in 1889 to $54,353,740 in 1890 ; an increase of 227 
per cent, in a single year. .As the assessment is on a basis of one-fifth to 
one-fourth of actual valuation, the true value of real estate and personal 
property in the city is over $200,000,000 ; but put it at only double the 
assessor's figures, and it amounts to $108,707,480, which, in a place of 50,000 
population, is an average of more than $2,000 for every inhabitant, within 
its municipal limits. This has no parallel in any other American city, if it 
has in the world. Seven new banks were founded during 1890, making six- 
teen in the city, with an aggregate capital and surplus of $4,853,000, and 
deposits amounting to $8,225,000 ; an increase, in a year, of over 300 j^er 
cent, in capital, and nearly 100 per cent, in deposits. Out of si.xty-four 
cities in the United States having clearing-houses. Salt Lake City out- 
ranks thirty-one, including Washington City, the National Capital, with its 
200,000 jiopulation, and the whole Government and Treasury Department 
thrown in to boot. The amount invested in new buildings and additions to 
old ones, in 1890, was $6,226,000 ; in public works $549,000 ; and in street 
railways $540,000 ; making a grand total of $7,315,000 in these three 
items of imjiroveinent. The city has sixty-five miles of electric street 
railways ; a lunulretl miles of admirable streets and 
ilrives ; twenty miles of twenty-foot sidewalks ; superb 
gas anil electric lighting systems ; an inexhaustible 
supply of pure mountain-stream water ; over two hun- 
dred prospering manufactories ; twenty-three public 
and fifteen private schools, and as handsome school- 
houses as any in the country ; the Territorial Univer- 
sity, deaf and dumb institute, normal institute and 
woman's home ; thirty-five churches of all denomina- 
tions. Catholic, Protestant, Hebrew and Mormon, in- 
cluding the great Temple and Tabernacle ; three 
excellent hospitals ; thirty benevolent societies ; four 
live daily papers, and twelve or fifteen weeklies, semi- 
nioiitlilics and monthlies, including one German and 

89 




one Scandinavian publication; six public libraries; two of the Imest theatres 
in the west; a hundred and fifty acres in parks; some of tiie largest mercan- 
tile houses between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean ; six rail- 
roads, with over sixty passenger trains daily ; health and pleasure resorts 
unsurpassed on earth ; a climate as nearly perfect as any place in the tem- 
perate zone ; as charming and cultivated society as can be found anywhere ; 
more beautiful homes and fewer shabby ones than any other city of its size 
in the Union, and more curious and interesting things than any other place of 
five time- its size in North America. 

It is the best amusement-patronizing city of its population in the world. 
Mapleson, Abbey, Daly, Frohman, Palmer, Theodore Thomas, and all first- 
class stars and companies crossing the continent, gather large and magnificent 
audiences in Salt Lake City. 

The theatre, built under the auspices of Brigham Young, seats eighteen 
hundred people, and the new opera-house fourteen hundred, and both are 
equipped with all modern improvements and conveniences. When these 
are inadequate to accommodate the crowds, the Mormon authorities are 
always obliging and polite in allowing their vast Tabernacle to be used ; 
so it has echoed the divine cadenzas of nearly every famous cantatrice 
and impressario of recent years. 

There are more first-class hotels in Salt ]^ake City than in St. Louis oi 
Cincinnati. The Knutsford, with three hundred rooms, vies in elegance 
with the best in the country ; and the million-dollar Ontario, named for the 
great Utah bonanza mine, will, when completed, rank with the most famous 
hostelries of the world. The Walker House, The CuUen, The Templeton, 
The Cliff, and The Union Pacific are all handsome and admirably kept ; 
and there are a dozen other houses of about the grade of The Laclede 
in St. Louis, The Sherman in Chicago, and The Gibson in Cincinnati. The 
Walker House abounds in historic memories and associations. Its hospitable 
roof has sheltered thousands of noted people, including Dom Pedro, Kala- 
kaua, Grant, Sherman, Patti, Garfield, Edmunds and Harrison ; and dukes, 
earls, counts, barons and other imported titular celebrities without number. 

Many of the churches are handsome and stately edifices ; the school 
buildings and hospitals would be creditable in any city of a quarter of a 
million people. There is no city of its size in the United States where the 
homes are so universally tasteful ; and shade-trees, lawns, fountains, fruit 
and fiowers are so abundant everywhere, that a bird's-eye view from Pros- 
pect Hill, or any of the lofty mountain-benches, gives a picture of a vast semi- 
tropical garden. It is strangely Oriental, and vividly suggestive of Mahom- 
et's reason for refusing to enter Damascus the Beautiful — "It is given unto 
man but once to enter Paradise, and I will not go into mine on earth." 

The Temple Block stands first among the things that must be seen. It 
is a ten-acre square, surrounded by a massive wall fifteen feet high and five 

QO 



feet thick. In it stands the magnificent Mormon Temple, the Tabernacle 
and the Assembly Hall. The Temple is, with the smgle exception of St 
Patrick's Cathedral in New York, the grandest and costliest ecclesiastical 
structure in the country. It was begun in 1S53, has cost nearly $6,000,000, 
and is still unfinished. It is two hundred feet long, a hundred feet wide, 
and a hundred feet high, with four towers, one at each corner, two 
hundred and twenty feet in height. The walls are ten feet thick, and the 
massiveness and solidity of its construction insure its defiance of the 
ravages of time for ages to come. It is built wholly of snow-white granite 
from the Cottonwood Canyon ; and, standing on one of the loftiest points 
in the city, it can be seen for fifty miles up and down the valley. 

The Tabernacle, which is just west of the Tem|)le in the same square, is 
one of the architectural curios of the world. It looks like a vast terrapin- 
back, or half of a jirodigious egg-shell cut in two lengthwise, and is built 
wholly of iron, glass and stone. It is two hundred and fifty feet long, a hun- 
dred and fifty feet wide, and a hundred feet high in the center of the roof, 
which is a single mighty arch, unsupported by pillar or post, and is said to 
have but one counterpart on the globe. The walls are twelve feet thick, and 
there are twenty huge double doors for entrance and exit. The Tabernacle 
seats 13,462 people, and its acoustic properties are so marvelously perfect 
that a whisper or the dropping of a pin can be heard all over it. The organ 
is one of the largest and grandest-toned in existence, and was built here of 
native woods, by Mormon workmen and artists, at a cost of §100,000. It is 
fifty-eight feet high, has fifty-seven stops, and contains two thousand six 
hundred and forty-eight pipes, some of them nearly as large as the chimneys 
of a Mississippi River steamboat. The choir consists of from two hundred 
to five hundred trained voices, and the music is glorious beyond description. 
Much of it is in minor keys, and a strain of plaintiveness mingles with all its 
majesty and power. All the seats are free, anil tourists from all parts of 
the world are to be f(jund among the vast multitude that assembles at every 
service Think of seeing the holy communion — broken bread, and water 
from the Jordan River instead of wine — administered to from six to eight 
thousand communicants at one time ! And fancy the old-time Mormon 
apostles, bishops, elders and warriors, marching in with from five to twenty 
wives, and from twenty-five to seventy-five children apiece ' 

Assembly Hall is of white granite, of Gothic architecture, and has seats for 
twenty-five hundred. The ceiling is elaborately frescoed with scenes from 
Mormon history, including the delivery of the golden plates, containing the 
New Revelation, to the Prophet Joseph Smith, by the Angel Moroni. The 
Hall contains a superb organ of native woods, and home workmanship. 

Just east of Temple Block is another walled square, containing the Mor- 
mon Tithing-House and printing-office, and Brigham Young's extensive 
residence, including the famous Lion House and Bee-Hive House, where 

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eiifhlccn of his wives livnl Across ihc sUcel U> llic cast is the scliool-house 
of his scventy-eiiiht cliiklrcn, which would be a very pretty chapel in an 
eastern town. Across llie street, sontii of ihe I. ion and I*>ee-Hive houses, is 
the super!) Amelia I'alace, whicii he l)uill for iiis nineteenth wife, Amelia 
Folsoin. who was a cousin of Mrs. drover lleveland. A block above, on 
the brow of the hill, is llrigham's i^rave, and his i)rivate .i^raveyard, where all 
his wives, with perhajis one exception, will ultimately be burieil around him, 
in the order of their marriaties. or "sealiny;s" to him ; the first one nearest 
to him. and so on, lo the latest ami farthest, 

rile threat /.ion ( 'ofiperat ixc Mercantile Institution, or .Mormon store, 
is one of the sights of the ntw It has several acres of floor-room ; carries 
on extensive aiul various manufacturing operations ; and sells and handles 
everything from a steam-engine and a forty horse-power threshing-machine 
to a ladv's watch and a Parisian lrou^seau ; from a patent hay-rake ov a 
hogshead of sugar, to a baby-wagon, a bo.x of bon-bons, or the latest agony 
in millmerv, scarfs ami dress ]iatterns. Its business runs from ,^(4. 000,000 
to $6,000,000 a year. 

Salt Lake City has the motlel post-t)tifice of the United Male>. When 
President Harrison and his party visited the city in the early part of 1S91. 
Postmaster-General Wanamaker was so pleased with the perfection of all its 
arrangements that he requested photographs of every department of it sent 
to Washington, to be used as patterns for other offices. Postmaster Benton, 
to whom the credit of its admirable features belongs, was formerly a trusted 
agent of the Rio Cirande Western Railway, and consequently received his 
training in a firsl-class school of efficienc\-. 

The Chamber of Commerce JUiilding is a handsome four-story structure 
of stone and brick, and contains an_ extensive and valuable library, and a 
wonderful collection of Ctah products — agricultural, mineral, pastoral ami 
textile. Offices of the Traffic. Accounting and Financial Departments of 
the Rio (irande W estern Railway occupy two floors of the block. 

The Deserel Museum is well worth a visit, having a vast number of curunis 
and interesting things on exhibition — Ctah beasts, birds, reptiles, insects, 
minerals, gems, fruits, flowers, freaks aiul queeriosities. Fort houglas, a full 
regimental post, on a high mountain bench or plateau iust east of the citv. 
IS one of the most picturescpie in all the dominions of I'ncle Samuel. It 
commands as glorious a view as lies out of iloors. 

Salt I.ake City is surrounded by lovely |)leasure-grounds and unsurpassable 
health-resorts. The mountains and canyons afford an endlessly varied field 
tor summer tourist recreation ; and medicated waters, pt>tent in healing 
virtues, gush forth in a hundreil places. The most famous of these are the 
Warm Springs, within the city limits, ami the Hot S]irings, about four 
miles out both on electric street-(ar lines. 'i'he water of Hot Springs 
has a temperature of 1 2S , and the llow is over 20,000 gallons an hour. It 

93 



possesses all the efticacv ni tlit- Arkansas Hot Springs water, and is a sover- 
eij^n remedy in all ordinary cases of rlieumatisni. rheumatic gout, scrofulous 
diseases, mineral poisoning, ulcers, abscesses and cutaneous eruptions of 
nearly every sort. Thousands of cures have been wrought here ; some of 
them seeminglv aluKJSt miraculous The water of the Warm Springs, with a 
temperature of iot, , is piped into a superb natatorium in the heart of the 
city: and it is but a question of time — ami a short lime at that — when the 
waters of the Hot Springs and of the (Ireat Salt Lake will be rendered 
ecpially convenient to the city bather. The invaliil here has the advantage 
of a climate that is as nearly ])crfect as can be founil: dry. bracing, com- 
bining the salt air of the sea with the pure and rarified air of the moun- 
tains ; where the sun shines nearly every day in the year ; where there is 
no fog, miasma, or malaria, and where the blizzards and sand-storms that 
afflict other health-resort regions are unknt)wn. 

Salt Lake City has profitable openings for nearl\ every variety of indus- 
trial enterprises, and for a constantly increasing number of wholesale and 
retail mercantile houses. Situateti almost exactly midway between Denver 
and San Francisco, the cily has tributary to it a grantl anil growing empire, 
rich in all materials u( commerce. With its long arms of railway rapidly 
reaching out north, south, east anil west, into Idaho. Nevada, .\rizt)na. 
New Mexico, and Southern Colorado, it is ilestined to become the undis- 
I'yuted Metropolis of the vast Inter-Mountain Realm. 



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